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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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http://www.archive.org/details/montessorimanualOOfish 



THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 




Dr. Montessori 



' THE 
MONTESSORI MANUAL 



IN WHICH DR. MONTESSORI 'S TEACHINGS AND EDUCATIONAL 

OCCUPATIONS ARE ARRANGED IN PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

OR LESSONS FOR THE MOTHER OR THE TEACHER 



DOROTHY CANFIELD J?ISHER 

AUTHOR OP "A MONTESSORI MOTHER," 
"THE SQUIRREL-CAGE," ETC. 



CHICAGO 

THE W. E. RICHARDSON CO. 

1913 



\J& 










Copyright 1918 

BY 

THE W. E. RICHARDSON CO. 



All Rights Reserved, Including That 

of Translation into Foreign 

Languages. 



©CI.A35754Q ^y 
2L§ <%_ 



FOREWORD 

It is now a year since the publication of ''The Montessori 
Mother, ' ' a year which has brought to the author of that volume a 
great mass of correspondence and innumerable personal interviews 
with American mothers interested in the new ideas about the edu- 
cation of young children. This first-hand experience with a wide 
circle of searchers for information has shown me the need, in the 
case of mothers untrained in educational methods, of a more con- 
crete and definite and less philosophical presentation of the ideas of 
the great Italian teacher. 

This unpretentious Manual is designed to meet that need and to 
be used by mothers of young children. 

It is also hoped that teachers will receive valuable hints from 
the suggestions in its pages, which their greater experience and pro- 
fessional training will enable them to expand into school-room exer- 
cises. For instance, many of the games and all of the gymnastic 
exercises suggested are practicable and desirable for any play- 
ground where young children gather. 

As a majority of the letters received from inquiring mothers 
have been concerned with the prickly questions of obedience and 
the general disciplinary atmosphere of the young child's life, I 
have thought best to add to the remarks about the use of the manu- 
factured and home-made apparatus, some practical hints about the 
disciplinary management of young children. It is my earnest hope 
that these suggestions as to the daily routine of life for young chil- 
dren will aid some of the mothers perplexed about the problem of 
teaching their children the habit of cheerful, sunny self-discipline 
and self-control. 

Dorothy Caotield Fisher. 
Arlington, Vermont, August, 1913. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Something Wrong with Modern Education 9-15 

Dr. Montessori to the Rescue — Her Great Idea 16-21 

An Italian Casa dei Bambini 22-29 

Use of the Apparatus in American Homes and Schools, 

for Exercises and Details, See Index. 30-102 

Nature Study 103-106 

Montessori Discipline and Obedience 107-123 

Some Questions that are Answered for Mothers and 

Teachers 24 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Dr. Montessori Frontispiece 

At Undirected Play with the Didactic or Sense Training 

Materials , 14 

Children Busy with the Cylindrical Inserts 20 

The Dressing Frames Are Fascinating for Small Children 20 
Learning Muscular Co-ordination ey Means of Mental 

Insets 20 

The Blindfold Game with the Wooden Insets — Develop- 
ing the Muscular Sense 20 

Exercising the Sense of Touch Combined with Muscular 

Sense in Learning the Form of Letters 38 

Working with the Montessori Movable Alphabet 38 

A Spontaneous Writing Lesson 54 

The Montessori Long Stair 54 

Children Putting Away Didactic Material, National Kin- 
dergarten College, Chicago 86 

torresdale house 102 

Junior Montessori Room, Torresdale 102 

KEPEESENTATIVE PAETS OF THE MONTESSOEI DIDACTIC 
APPAEATUS 

(Opposite Page 30) 

Color Spools Page 30 

Buttoning and Lacing Frames, Exercise Two Plate I 

Solid Geometrical Insets, Exercise One . . , Plate II 

The Long Stair, Exercise Six Plate II 

The Tower, Exercise Four Plate III 

7 



8 ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Broad Stair, Exercise Five Plate III 

Sandpaper Board, No. 1, Exercise Seven Plate IV 

Sandpaper Board, No. 2, Exercise Eight Plate IV 

Color Boxes, Exercises Sixteen and Seventeen Plate V 

Sound Boxes, Exercise Ten Plate V 

Plain Geometrical Insets, Exercises Eleven and Twelve.Plate VI 

Plain Geometrical Forms, Exercise Thirteen Plate VII 

Parts of Movable Alphabet, Exercise Nineteen Plate VIII 

Computing Boxes, Exercises Twenty-three and 

Twenty-four , Plate VIII 

Illustrations in this volume, if not otherwise indicated below the illus- 
trations themselves, are copyrighted 1913, by The House of Childhood, Inc., 
200 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. This firm has been designated by Dr. 
Montessori as the sole licensee for her apparatus in the United States and 
Canada. They manufacture and distribute the Didactic Apparatus herein 
illustrated. 



THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

i 

SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN 
EDUCATION 

One of the most distinguishing features of twen- 
tieth-century life is the deep-rooted, wide-spread 
dissatisfaction with the way modern children are 
being educated. In most great world-centers one 
finds the same naive certainty that there, in that 
spot, the problem is most insoluble, and that else- 
where conditions are better. In our America 
everyone is decrying our national fault of cheap 
superficiality as the poison of our schools and look- 
ing with longing eyes toward the "thoroughness" 
of German and English methods. In England 
they are bewailing their hide-bound, slow conserv- 
atism and envying American flexibility and quick- 
ness in facing the problem of education. In 
France they are appalled at the mental inertia of 
the pupils and in Germany they are crying out 
that their insistence on the letter has killed the 
spirit. 



10 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

The truth seems to be that we are suddenly 
demanding more of education than we ever before 
dreamed possible. It is not that our schools or 
our methods of education are worse than those 
which have preceded them, but that we see them 
to be so far, far below what they might be — what 
they ought to be. The disquieting truth which 
has so upset us all is that there is no real reason 
why every child should not be really educated in 
the way which would bring out the greatest 
number possible of his own individual powers, 
which are, of course, different from the powers 
of every other human being in the world. 

We are all dolefully agreed that this is not being 
done, that a large per cent of the innate abilities 
of the population of the world is wasted for lack 
of proper training, and that a tragic per cent of 
the time spent in school, is spent to no purpose, 
is practically blotted from the all-too-short lives 
of the helpless children, subjected to a meaningless 
routine. 

A highly successful head of a department in 
a New York Public High School told me, not 
long ago, that after his lifetime of experience 
in modern education he had sickening moments of 
doubt as to whether the whole system did not do 
more harm than good, inasmuch as it seemed to 
crush out what small natural, genuine living 



SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN EDUCATION 11 

abilities the children have, in order to replace 
these by a certain amount of rote-learned " in- 
formation." "We destroy," he said, sadly, "the 
living, vital, eternal and immortal processes of 
invention, resourcefulness and logic and prop up 
unsteadily in their places, a large number of facts, 
which will all be swept away by the research of 
the next fifty years." 

This note of alarm is to be heard from every 
corner of the civilized world, clear, unmistakable, 
practically unanimous. But the chorus of sug- 
gested causes for this lamentable condition is confus- 
ing in its variety; while as for possible remedies, 
the contradictory recommendations are deafening 
and innumerable. 

Time Unpeofitably Spent. — And yet there are 
one or two common notes, one or two commonly 
admitted flaws in present systems of education. 
Everywhere people cry out that children do not 
make the most of their time; that only a small 
part of their school-life is spent in educating 
themselves; that most of it seems to be spent 
unprofitably, for one reason or another, mostly for 
reasons connected with our traditional ideals of 
school order and discipline and regularity. And 
yet these ideals are, in spite of all the uneasiness, 
usually accepted unquestioningly, as though they 
were axiomatic laws of nature. We are told that 



12 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

with modern conditions, there cannot be, at the 
very least, less than thirty children in a class; 
which means with present school methods that dur- 
ing a great deal of the time, twenty-nine children 
are sitting passively, waiting their turn, while one 
child is getting a little brief educational exercise; 
which means that lessons must be kept down to 
the capacity of the dullest of the thirty and, 
therefore, that twenty-nine children, finishing their 
lesson before him, must pass empty, profitless time, 
varying in a vicious ratio according to their 
native ability. 

The Bright "Child Unprovided for by Present 
System. — Everyone must remember the pregnant 
exclamation of the old educator at the great edu- 
cational convention, "We have methods for the 
dull child, and systems for the deficient child, but 
God help the bright child!" 

To keep thirty children moving as one, which 
is (so we seem to think) the only way to avoid 
intellectual and moral anarchy and chaos, a great 
deal of avowed and a still greater deal of un- 
avowed marking-time is necessary. One boy has 
a natural gift for mathematics, and in two months 
time has mastered the arithmetical work intended 
for the year in his class. Is his mind given more 
of the food it craves and which it can so well 
digest? Is he allowed to go on, to take the next 



SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN EDUCATION 13 

step for which he is so eagerly ready? Not at 
all. His memory is not quick to retain the in- 
sanities of English spelling, and hence, so goes our 
logic, he must wait a year before he is allowed to 
go forward in mathematics. He must waste a year 
of his short life — it is even worse than wasted, for 
the continual reiteration in daily recitations of 
problems which he has already mastered, dull the 
natural keenness of his mind and sicken him of 
the whole subject; so that when he is finally 
allowed to advance, he has but a listless attention 
for what, ten months before, would have been an 
intellectual feast for an eager appetite. 

Arbitrary Classification- Undesirable. — Our edu- 
cational specialists admit that this is unfortunate, 
but insist that it is inevitable. What can be done? 
A big schoolhouse, containing six hundred chil- 
dren, would be, we are told, in utter confusion 
and turmoil if the children were allowed continu- 
ally to pass from one class to another. Who 
would decide every day or even every week which 
class each child belonged to? As if it made the 
slightest difference what class a child belongs to, 
if he is being satisfactorily educated! It seems 
incredible to us now that in the eighteenth cen- 
tury when Braddock's soldiers went marching out 
to fight the Indians, that no one thought of ask- 
ing, "What is the good of all those fine red coats, 



14 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

if the soldiers only fight the worse because of 
them?" Possibly in the twenty-first century it 
will seem incredible that none of us asked, "What 
is the good of classifying children arbitrarily if 
they only learn the worse because of it?" Those 
ordered phalanxes, marching up and down our 
well-ordered schoolhouse halls, are all very well; 
but have they anything to do with educating the 
individual child — and, of course, the individual 
child is all we ever have to educate. 

Children Become Passive. — In the chorus of 
complaint of our systems of education, I detect 
another note common to all countries and all tem- 
peraments. Somehow, we accuse ourselves, we 
have mismanaged things so that children in the 
schoolroom have a strange tradition of passivity, 
instead of their natural buoyant impulse to action, 
so noticeable on their playgrounds. As one teacher 
cried out to me not long ago in a fit of exaspera- 
tion, "By the time they reach me they haven't 
enough intellectual curiosity left to save their 
minds alive! Do what I will, all they do is to 
sit back and watch me teach." In our reaction 
from the piercing intellectual bleakness of the 
Puritan regime of force in education, we seem to 
have created in our schoolrooms an enervating 
atmosphere in which there is but little brisk, tonic 
invitation to keep moving intellectually. The child 





undirected play with the didactic or sense-training materials 



SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN EDUCATION 15 

who sits passively quiet is too often praised as 
being a "good" child. He is too often encouraged 
to do this instead of to exercise his intellectual 
muscles by a constant participation in a variety of 
interesting movements, taken spontaneously. 



II 



DR. MONTESSORI TO THE EESCUE— THE 
UNDERLYING IDEA OF HER SYSTEM 

It was with the echo in my ears of a great deal 
of such clamor and unrest from both teachers and 
parents that I went to Rome the winter of 1911-1912, 
having for one of my objects the investigation of a 
new system of education for very small children, said 
to have been devised by an Italian woman. I 
was in rather a sceptical frame of mind. There 
have been in America a good many new " sys- 
tems" of education which have come to very little. 
Italy is notoriously behind the rest of the world 
in her public schools. It seemed not likely that 
America would have much to learn from a new 
variety of Kindergarten established in Rome. Be- 
fore I went to visit this new variety of infant- 
school, I procured the book written on the sys- 
tem by the woman-doctor who had founded it. 
I found the volume in some ways rather hard 
reading, written in difficult Italian, full of tech- 
nical terms, medical facts of which I had been 
ignorant, physiological pyschology and the nerv- 

16 



THE UNDERLYING IDEA 17 

ous reactions in the human brain. But in spite 
of all these difficulties I was held as I have 
never been held by the most absorbing novel, and 
when I finally laid down the bulky volume, it was 
with the certainty of having seen a great light. 

Here was a doctor, who had begun with a 
purely medical interest in children's brains, who 
had grappled hand to hand with the heart-break- 
ing problem of the education of mentally deficient 
children and who, in that struggle, had discovered 
certain laws about the intellectual tendencies and 
intellectual activities of childhood in general. She 
" discovered" them, as a scientist does discover 
general laws, as Newton discovered the law of 
gravity. He was not the first man who had ever 
seen an apple drop to the ground. Everybody for 
centuries had known that they fall thus, and had 
been taking advantage in a fitful, irregular way 
of this only half-consciously known information. 
Newton ''discovered" no new thing. He formu- 
lated the general underlying principles, involved 
in phenomena already observed, he made that in- 
formation accurate, definite, to be counted upon, 
to be employed with certainty of the result, to be 
used, as it has been used, in the exploration of 
the solar system. 

Dr. Montessori emerged from her laboratory 
work with deficient children with scientific proofs 



18 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

of certain fundamental principles of children's 
intellectual processes. And, being a scientist, she 
did what few of us really can do, she believed in 
facts scientifically proved. 

Acts upon Facts Scientifically Proved. — 
What were these facts? In essence nothing new, 
nothing that we do not admit in theory, although 
we do not have the courage to act upon them. 
What is so startling about Dr. Montessori's atti- 
tude towards education is the honest, scientist's 
integrity of her logic. .She continually says, in 
substance, "If that is the way children are made, 
our business is to educate them accordingly." \ 

One of the facts she rediscovered is the old 
threadbare truism that every child is different 
from every other child. We all knew that before. 
The only difference between Dr. Montessori and 
the rest of us is that we disregard this well- 
known factor in the problem and that she takes 
it fully into account. It is not surprising that she 
does her educational sum with much more nearly 
an approximation to the right answer, than our 
wildly varying and always highly inaccurate re- 
sults. 

Dr. Montessori found that not only does every 
child differ from every other child but, not being 
a fixed and inanimate object, he is in a constant 
state of flux, and differs from himself, from day 



THE UNDERLYING IDEA 19 

to day, as lie grows. His attention, his memory, 
his mental endurance, his intellectual interest and 
curiosity, are not only unlike those of the child 
next him in school, but will be tomorrow differ- 
ent from what they are today. Then instead of 
turning tail and running away (as most of our 
educators do) from the tremendous problem in- 
volved in adequately treating such complicated 
little organisms, Dr. Montessori faced the situa- 
tion squarely, accepting as every scientist does, the 
odds given him by Mother Nature. It was evi- 
dent to her that the usual " class recitation" and 
"class lessons" were out of the question, since 
they could at the best, possibly fit the needs of 
only one child in the class. And yet it is obvi- 
ously impossible, as the world is made up, to have 
a teacher for every child. There was only one 
way out — things must somehow be so organized 
and arranged that, for most of the time, the child 
can and shall teach himself. 

The Underlying Idea. — And here Dr. Mon- 
tessori found herself in happy accord with another 
fundamental principle of the growth of childhood, 
which she had discovered or rediscovered and 
which may be said broadly to be the master idea 
of her system. The central idea of the Montessori 
system, on which every smallest bit of apparatus, 
every detail of technic rests solidly, is a full recog- 



20 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

nition of the fact that no human being is educated 
by anyone else. He must do it himself or it is 
never done. The learner must do his own learn- 
ing, and this granted, it follows naturally that the 
less he is interfered with by arbitrary restraint 
and vexatious, unnecessary rules, the more quickly, 
easily and spontaneously he will learn. Everyone 
who wishes to adopt her system, or to train chil- 
dren according to her method, must learn con- 
stantly to repeat to himself and to act upon, at 
every moment, this maxim, "All growth must come 
from a voluntaky action of the child himself." 

The System Must Fit the Child. — In this 
respect again Dr. Montessori took squarely the 
stand that education must be made to fit the child 
and the child not forced to fit a preconceived idea 
of what education ought to be or do. She laid 
down in the first place the principle that one of 
the essentials of education is that children shall 
get that individual attention they need so much, 
by giving it to themselves, each child being his own 
teacher. She now further stated as another essen- 
tial element that education should be so organized 
that the child shall ardently desire to teach him- 
self and shall enjoy doing it more than anything 
else. 

To reduce then, to the barest outline (because 
that is the most easily grasped and retained), this 





Children busy with the Cylindrical 
Insets 



The Dressing Frames are fascinating 
tor small children 




Learning Muscular Co-ordination by 
means of the Metal Insets 



The Blindfold Game with the Wooden 

Insets — Developing the Muscular 

Sense 



\ 



THE UNDERLYING IDEA 21 

new system of training children, one can say that 
it rests upon a full conviction of these three facts 
about the nature of children: 

First. — Children are all different from each 
other, and hence need for their fullest development, 
the greatest possible liberty for their individual- 
ities to grow; and that, though of course there are 
many points in common, they must not be treated 
in the lump, but individually. 

Second. — Children cannot, so to speak, learn 
from the outside. That is, that the impulse to 
learn must come from within their own minds. 
There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. 
Children must wish to learn, or it is a physical 
impossibility for them to do so. 

Third. — Children are so made that, given proper 
conditions, they prefer educating themselves to any 
other occupation. 



Ill 



AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI— A DAY 
WITH THE CHILDREN'S ACTIVITIES 

What has been said thus far is almost certain 
to have aroused in the minds of many readers the 
question, "How in the world does Dr. Montessori 
accomplish all this?" or, perhaps the more skep- 
tical exclamation, "It can't be done, by Dr. Mon- 
tessori or anyone else!" How can children teach 
themselves? How can they learn without detailed 
verbal instructions from a teacher? 

How does a boy learn to climb an apple tree? 
By being turned loose in company with the tree 
at that period of his life when he feels a surging 
natural impulse to climb trees. A boy of three 
can play about the foot of an apple tree day after 
day and no more think of climbing it than we of 
walking the ridge pole of our house. A man of 
twenty-one can play tennis, or plough, under the 
tree's branches with a similar lack of monkey-like 
desire to climb from branch to branch. But some- 
where between those ages, there is a period in every 
normal life when, if the opportunity is present, a 

22 



AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINi 23 

vast amount of muscular agility, strength and 
accuracy are acquired, together with considerable 
physical courage, some daring, some prudence, and 
a fair amount of good judgment, all without the 
slightest need either to force or persuade the child 
to the acquisition of these desirable qualities. 

The Puepose of the Montessori Devices and 
Their Educational Value. — Now, for all intents 
and purposes, the Montessori apparatus, so much 
talked of, so scientifically and ingeniously devised, 
is simply composed of supplementary apple trees. 
It is made up of devices and inventions which are 
intended, first, to stimulate the little child's natural 
desire to act and learn through action; second, to 
provide him with action which shall give him a 
better control of his own body and will-power; and 
third, which shall lead him naturally from a 
simple action to a more difficult one. 

Trains the Five Senses. — In the case of very 
little children this is (as far as concerns the 
formal Montessori apparatus sold) largely con- 
nected with the training of the senses. The im- 
portance of this detailed, direct education of the 
five senses may not be at first apparent. But it 
is evident that our five senses are our only means 
of conveying information to our brains about the 
external world which surrounds us, and it is equally 
evident that to act wisely and surely in the world, 



24 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

the brain has need of the fullest and most accu- 
rate information possible. Hence it is a foregone 
conclusion (once we think of it at all) that the 
education of all the senses of a child to rapidity, 
agility and exactitude, is of great importance — not 
at all for the sake of the information acquired at 
the time by the child, but for the sake of the 
five, finely accurate instruments which this educa- 
tion puts under his control. 

Moxtessobi Spirit Is the First Essential. — 
Much has been written and said about the Mon- 
tessori Didactic Apparatus, but before I begin on 
a description of the apparatus, or of a Casa dei 
Bambini, I wish to make this protest. The use 
of her apparatus without an understanding of the 
underlying principles and without the spirit that 
animates all true Montessori work will result only 
in confusion and disorder. The Montessori Didac- 
tic Apparatus is a part of the system, but the 
most vital element is the Montessori spirit. The 
apparatus is immensely ingenious, it is wonder- 
fully successful, it accomplishes its purpose with 
great economy of effort, but the apparatus alone 
is not enough. The mother on a desert island who 
is dominated by Dr. Montessori 's love and 
respect for the child would accomplish much more 
without the formal apparatus than a mother who 
uses it without the sympathy and understanding 



AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI- 25 

requisite for success. So, dear mother, do not 
become discouraged if you cannot afford the 
apparatus. Above all have faith and confidence 
in your child, and your ability to put the Mon- 
tessori spirit into the everyday affairs of the 
child's home life. 

The Casa dei Bambini. — If you wish to see a 
typical Casa dei Bambini (which means Children's 
Home) you are to imagine thirty children turned 
loose, absolutely loose, in a big, airy room, fur- 
nished with little chairs and tables, light enough 
for the little ones to handle, with room outdoors, 
close at hand, where the children may run and play 
when they feel like it. You are to imagine a quiet, 
gentle, alert, nearly always silent superintendent, 
to whom all those little self -teachers turn for advice 
in their educational career; a piano in one corner 
of the room, to the music of which once in a while 
those children who feel like it dance and play. 
There are soft rugs on the floor, on which those 
children who feel tired may lie down and rest when- 
ever they like. On the walls there are pleasant pic- 
tures of subjects suitable for little children. There 
are window-boxes of plants, tended by the little 
pupils; there are in one corner some little wash- 
stands with small bowls and pitchers where the 
children wash their own faces and hands, whenever 
they are dirtied by their work or play. In fact, 



26 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

the room and its furnishings are exactly like what 
every mother would like to give her own children 
in her own home. The Casa dei Bambini is truly 
a " Children's Home" — a place for self-reliant work 
and contented play. Such a home centers and holds 
within its walls the child's every interest, and how 
completely and happily children are at home in it! 
Feel a Responsibility. — The children learn to 
feel, because they are allowed to, a real responsi- 
bility for the condition of this, their very own home. 
Before they begin the morning's work, the school- 
room is cleaned by themselves, using tiny brooms 
and dustpans, just the right size for their little 
hands, and they make their own morning toilets 
neatly and cheerfully at the little washstands. They 
ail seem like brothers and sisters of one big fam- 
ily, living the happiest and sanest of family lives 
together in one big, well-furnished nursery. They 
forms groups of two or three, over some difficult 
problem; or four or five in a game with some part 
of the apparatus which needs a number of children 
together; or ten or twelve in a ring-around-the-rosy 
game to the music of the piano. Out in the play- 
ground, bright with flowers and plants of their 
own tending, there are always some children who 
are racing pbout in an Italian version of "black- 
man" or "blindman's buff." ISTo one makes the 
slightest effort to induce them to stop playing in 



AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI 27 

order to come and learn their letters or the sim- 
pler processes of arithmetic. They do so of their 
very own accord. It has been found, first, that 
although they are free to do so if they wish, they 
no more wish to spend all their time in playing 
children's games than workers in a candy factory 
desire to consume chocolate drops all the time. 

Value of Free- Will Over Enforced Atten- 
tion. — The second discovery is of even greater 
importance than the first; is in fact of such vital 
importance that it cannot be too often stated and 
emphasized in any writing about this system. This 
is the discovery that one moment of real attention, 
given of the child's own free will, with actual vivify- 
ing interest back of it, is worth more educationally 
than hours of enforced listening to a teacher teach. 
Such a moment of real attention is worth more 
because it is worth everything, while the enforced 
listening to teaching is worth nothing. 

Luncheon in the Casa dei Bambini. — The chil- 
dren, as a rule, busy themselves happily with the 
different parts of the apparatus most of the morn- 
ing. Towards noon, preparations for luncheon begin. 
The children take turns in doing this work, four 
or five being charged every day with the responsi- 
bility of setting the tables, bringing in the soup 
tureens, and serving their little mates. There is 
no better description of this most interesting and 



28 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

valuable part of the routine of the day than the 
passage in Dr. Montessori's own book, The Mon- 
tessori Method, page 348: "Any one who has 
watched them setting the table must have passed 
from one surprise to another. Little four-year-old 
waiters take the knives and forks and spoons and 
distribute them to the different places; they carry 
trays holding as many as five water glasses, and 
finally they go from table to table, carrying tureens 
full of hot soup. Not a mistake is made, not a 
glass is broken, not a drop of soup is spilled. All 
during the meal, unobtrusive little waiters watch 
the table assiduously; not a child empties his soup- 
plate without being offered more; if he is ready 
for the next course, a waiter briskly carries off his 
soup-plate. Not a child is forced to ask for more 
soup, or to announce that he has finished. 

"Remembering the usual condition of four-year- 
old children, who cry, who break whatever they 
touch, who need to be waited on, everyone is deeply 
moved by the sight I have just described, which 
evidently results from the development of energies 
deeply latent in the human soul. I have often 
seen spectators moved to tears at this banquet of 
little ones." 

Exercise Their Owjt Choice. — After lunch, the 
children again choose freely their own occupations. 
Some run out to play on the playground; some 



AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI 29 

water the plants under their especial care ; some 
take naps as long as they like. By far the greater 
number, however, return to the Montessori appa- 
ratus and occupy themselves with that fascinating 
material until it is time for them to go back to 
their parents' homes — for they consider the school- 
room as their own home. And well they may, for 
everything in it is devised scientifically, carefully, 
ingeniously and devotedly to the comfort, profit, enjoy- 
ment and self-education of children from three to 
seven. That is certainly not true of the average 
home in Italy or America, but if it were, how much 
more interesting to the child and more helpful would 
be the environments of the home! 



IV 



USE OF THE APPARATUS WITH COMPRE- 
HENSIVE AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS 
TO THE MOTHER OR TEACHER 

We in America who have children between the 
ages of two and seven can not as yet send our chil- 
dren to a Casa dei Bambini. Therefore, if we 
wish our children to profit by the great work of 
Dr. Montessori, we must do the next best- thing, 
and give them the Montessori training in our own 
homes. The fact that we have only the children of 
our own home to deal with, as compared to the 
thirty in the Casa dei Bambini should not lessen 
the sense of responsibility or the diligence with 
which we strive to make daily application of the 
Montessori principles. The mother has some advan- 
tages which the superintendent of the Montessori 
schoolroom does not have. She has the children 
constantly with her, and she can, if she will, turn 
into a Montessori exercise almost everything the 
child does in the course of his waking hours. 
These valuable and constantly present opportunities 
for supplementary Montessori work in ordinary home 




m: 




Color Spools 



© m 



© m 



Wk&utfi&kmd 






§ 1 



°c 



I 






SI 




"3 -s' 

(55 § 



h-i 1 



H 



IIL 







00 w 



The Tower 

(To be used in Exercise Four) 



IV. 



«■ 




Sandpaper Boards 

(To be used in Exercises Seven and Eight) 











;■" 




Color Boxes 

(To be used in Exercises Sixteen and Seventeen) 






m 






VI. 




VII. 



□□□□□□ 

H ra H ra ra H 



■oloioioiof 



□ nnnnn 



o 



Plane Geometric Forms 

(To be used in Exercise Thirtee 



VIII. 





■■ Q : 4i- 






Part of Movable Alphabet 

(To be used in Exercise Nineteen) 




Computing Boxes 

(To be used in Exercises Twenty-three and Twenty-four) 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 31 

life will be touched upon as the regular apparatus 
is described and explained in the following lessons. 
But this treatment must be considered only sug- 
gestive. Every mother with any of the usual 
American adaptability and ingenuity can and will 
be able, after reading these hints, to devise a hun- 
dred new exercises for her children — exercises which 
will develop the typically Montessori qualities of 
muscular accuracy, bodily poise, mental ability, and 
moral responsibility. 

Let us suppose that the box containing the Mon- 
tessori apparatus comes into the home when the 
three-year-old child for whom it is intended is 
asleep. The mother takes her time to look over 
the large collection of queer-looking objects and, 
if she is wise, puts away, for the present, every- 
thing but the simplest of the Buttoning Frames and 
the three sets of Solid Geometric Insets. 

EXERCISE ONE 
TO FIX THE CHILD'S ATTENTION ON SIZE AND FOEM 

Solid Geometrical Insets. — These comprise three 
series of wooden cylinders set in corresponding holes 
in a thick, smoothly planed board. There are ten 
cylinders to each of the three series. In the first, 
the height of the cylinders is constant and the diam- 
eter varies; in the second series, the diameter is 
constant and the height varies; in the third series, 



32 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

the cylindrical form alone is constant, height and 
diameter varying. With these insets, the child, work- 
ing independently, learns to discriminate objects 
according to thickness, height and size, and the 
material used controls the error. 

When the child wakes up, he is told there are 
some new playthings in the house, and one of the 
Solid Geometric Series is shown him. As a rule, 
he needs no further supervision in the use of this 
piece of apparatus, since it is self-corrective. If 
he gets a small cylinder in the big hole, when he 
comes to the small hole, the big cylinder will not 
go in it, and he is forced to look back to correct 
his own mistake. Here, as in the use of all the 
Montessori apparatus, it is well to remember that 
the best thing one can do for the child is to let 
him alone as much as possible. "Hands off!" is 
the motto for adults in adopting the Montessori 
system for a child. The important thing is not 
that the cylinders shall all be put back in the right 
holes, but that the child shall do it himself! Any 
ordinarily active, right-minded baby of three will 
fight for this right himself, pushing away help and 
crying "Let me," and the adults should religiously 
respect this desire to begin a life of self-independ- 
ence. And yet, of course, adult brains can often 
devise some method of using the apparatus which 
will make the process of learning self-independence 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 33 

easier for the child. One of the discoveries made 
by Dr. Montessori is that the sense of touch is 
very much more developed in little children than 
the sense of sight; that is, that they can tell more 
about an object after they have handled it than 
if they have merely looked at it. So that in the 
case of the solid geometric insets, it is well to explain 
to a child who has difficulty in getting the cylinders 
back in the right hole that if he holds a cylinder by 
the little knob with the fingers of his left hand 
and passes the forefinger of his right hand around 
the base of it, and then around the opening into 
which he thinks it ought to fit, that he will prob- 
ably be more accurate than if he merely looks at 
the two objects. 

It is well that the mother should understand just 
why the child should be interested in these exer- 
cises. There are two fundamental traits of child- 
hood involved: first, any normal child takes a great 
interest in putting objects in rows; second, any 
child is delighted when he can put an object into 
an opening. Combining these two traits of child- 
hood, we have a fascinating educational device. The 
child is not only happily employed but he is learn- 
ing something that is of value. He is learning 
to discriminate between different objects. Although 
he does it unconsciously, he is forming an idea of 
spacial relations. He is developing concentration 



34 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

because this play, fascinating as it is, requires con- 
centration. When he discriminates between the 
different cylinders, he must necessarily form primi- 
tive judgments. This brief description will, I hope, 
give you some idea of the educational value of these 
first simple exercises. 

When the child can successfully put the various 
cylinders in their respective openings, the exercises 
can be made more complex by giving all the cylin- 
ders to the child and only one of the bases. This 
requires a greater discrimination, making the exer- 
cise more complex. The cylinders can also be used 
a little later in teaching nomenclature, to show the 
difference between thick and thin, thicker and thin- 
ner, high and low, higher and lower, etc. 

After he has mastered the simpler exercises, the 
child may be blindfolded or, looking in another 
direction, place the various cylinders into the open- 
ings. These exercises bring into play the tactile 
and muscular senses, both of which are very acute 
in small children. Since the child delights to feel 
of objects, it will not be long until he will take a 
great interest in the game of "seeing with his 
fingers." These sets of cylinders are perhaps the 
simplest of all the equipment and at the same time 
I might say they have proved the most fascinating 
for small children. 

The Tracing of Forms, "The Beginnings" of 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 35 

Writing. — The child should be cautioned (and his 
mother should take pains about this in all Mon- 
tessori exercises) to make the motions always from 
the left to the right, in the directions in which the 
writing is done, for these exercises, unlikely as 
it seems, are the beginnings of writing and reading. 
Then he should be left to "play" with this new toy, 
as long as his interest lasts, which will vary greatly 
according to the degree of development reached, the 
temperament of the child, and even his state of 
health. When he is perfectly well and rested and 
not hungry, he can do much better work than other- 
wise^ — very much like the rest of us! His attention 
to the exercise must, of course, be spontaneous, 
brought about by the interest of the task given, 
and if the task does not happen to interest that 
particular child at that particular moment, nothing 
can be gained by forcing him or even coaxing him 
to go on with it. He will return to it another day, 
or perhaps even an hour later, of his own accord. 

EXERCISE TWO 
FOE CO-ORDINATING MOVEMENTS OF THE FINGERS 

The Buttoning or Dressing Frames. — There 
are eight of the dressing or buttoning frames. Any 
one or more of these can be used effectively with- 
out association with the others. On six wooden 
frames are mounted six pieces of cloth of varying 



36 THE MONTESSOEI MANUAL 

textures, to be joined by means of large buttons 
and buttonholes, automatic fasteners, small buttons 
and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, colored ribbons for 
bow-tying, and lacing through eyelets. The remain- 
ing two frames are mounted with leather pieces, 
one of which simulates shoe lacing and the other 
shoe buttoning, the latter involving the use of the 
button hook. These exercises are for the develop- 
ment of co-ordinate movements of the fingers. The 
child is taught to dress himself without his really 
knowing that a lesson is being taught him, and 
when the frames are mastered, his first desire is 
to make a practical application of his new ability. 
The Buttoning Frame, or the frame with "hooks 
and eyes," should be brought out first, and the 
method of fastening and unfastening explained in 
the usual Montessori way; that is, as briefly as 
possible. It is often best not to say anything, but 
merely to go through the exercises one's self, unbut- 
toning or unhooking the cloth, buttoning or hook- 
ing it up again, and handing the frame to the child. 
In most cases he at once sets to work, and even 
though his first efforts seem to the observing mother 
incredibly clumsy and slow, she must keep her 
hands off, and let him work out his own problems. 
The only rule should be that if he does not wish 
to play with the apparatus, or when he grows tired 
of its use, he should put it away; and for that pur- 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 37 

pose it is very essential that there should be a 
well defined place, which the child can easily reach, 
for every one of his belongings — not only for the 
Montessori apparatus, but for his other toys and 
for his clothing. The hooks should be low, so that 
little arms can reach them, and the drawers where 
clothing is put away should be easy to open and 
shut. Three years is none too young to begin the 
habit of order, which, like so many other good 
habits, may be acquired painlessly at an early age, 
although so nearly impossible to inculcate after the 
bad habits have become fixed. The exercises with 
the dressing frames are not necessarily for the 
developing of the different senses. The primary 
object is to develop the muscular co-ordination to 
strengthen the child's little fingers. These materials 
carry out Dr. Montessori 's ideas of simplicity, self- 
correction and general attractiveness. They are so 
simple that the child at once understands the mean- 
ing of the game, and in working with these various 
materials his little fingers and hands are so strength- 
ened that he may successfully take up more complex 
and difficult work. Of course, one of the incidents 
of this work is that he learns to dress and undress 
himself. This, it should be remembered, is not 
the primary factor that Dr. Montessori has in mind. 
It is incidental to the general muscular co-ordination 
that is effected. 



38 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

EXERCISE THREE 

SUPPLEMENTARY EXERCISES TEACHING THE PRACTICAL 

APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE GAINED WITH 

THE APPARATUS 

One obvious result sought in all these exercises 
is the beginning in the child's mind of the habit 
of concentration to the task in hand. The insets 
are primarily intended, as already stated, to teach 
the child to distinguish between differences in dimen- 
sion and form, and this can be taught by supple- 
mentary exercises in almost any room of the house. 

First. — In the dining-room he can be given a 
pile of spoons of differing size, teaspoons, table- 
spoons, soup-spoons, coffee-spoons, etc., and the 
suggestion made to him that it would be fun to 
separate them into piles according to their sizes. 
In most cases, this impromptu Montessori exercise 
can be depended upon to amuse the child for an 
astonishingly long period, and it is, of course, excel- 
lent training for his capacity to distinguish accu- 
rately between objects similar but of differing size. 
In the kitchen, a pile of pans and covers will afford 
a great deal of valuable practice in distinguishing 
which cover will fit which pan. 

Second. — Out of doors, a pile of stones of differ- 
ing sizes can be divided into several piles of the 
same size. Most mothers will be surprised at the 




Exercising the sense of touch combined with muscular 
sense in learning the form ol letters 




Working with the Montessori Movable Alphabet 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 39 

vast and inextinguishable interest taken in such 
simple exercises by the average healthy child of 
three or over. The gain in accuracy of eye and 
brain is too obvious to need discussion. 

Third. — The buttoning frames are intended first 
of all to teach the child to use his hands and fingers 
accurately and well, and next to enable him to dress 
himself as far as may be. This is very important, 
for the first thing to be done for a little child is 
to release him as quickly as possible from the prison 
of babyishness — to make it possible for him to take 
care of himself, and not to depend upon the serv- 
ices of others. As his clothes are nearly always 
fastened with buttons, it is essential that consider- 
able time be devoted to teaching him how to manage 
these, or, rather, that he shall be allowed to take 
the time necessary to learn this. For he has a 
natural fund of desire to manage himself which 
makes him eager to learn. The buttoning frames, 
being of cloth tightly stretched on wood, are easier 
for him to manage than the buttons on his own 
clothes, although as soon as he begins to try to 
button his own coats and waists, he should be 
allowed all the time he needs for his first clumsy 
and ineffectual attempts. Eemember, he should be 
allowed all the time he needs — not all the help he 
needs I For if he is often helped, he will fall into 
the vicious, invalid's habit of waiting for other 



40 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

people to serve him. Care should be taken that 
the buttons on his clothes are large and easily 
grasped by his little wandering fingers, and that, 
if possible, they should be put on in positions where 
he can get at them without too much wriggling and 
twisting. This is more important by far than that 
they should be handsome, or set on according to 
the latest fashion. 

Fourth. — In addition to the buttons and hooks 
on his own clothes, it is a good idea to give him 
other things which fasten in that way; and a large 
doll which can wear his own clothes is a very good 
aid at this stage of his development. The doll is 
most easily made and most serviceable, constructed 
of cloth and stuffed. As it can wear the clothes of 
the child, he has a large wardrobe ready at hand 
to play with, and he can manage it much better 
than the usual doll's clothes with minute buttons 
and buttonholes, which are hard even for adult 
fingers. It is well to remember, here and always, 
that, as a rule, children must have large objects 
to deal with, rather than small, if their eyesight is 
to be preserved without injury. 

Fifth. — The lace and ribbon frames are more 
difficult to use and are, of course, to be held back 
until the child is older, perhaps four or five. From 
time to time, they should be brought out and a 
simple experiment made of the child's capacity to 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 41 

deal with it. If he does not at once show interest 
in the problem of bow-knots and laces, and more 
of a capacity to struggle with the construction of 
them than on the last trial, the frame should be 
taken away, without comment, and not tried again 
until more progress has been made in the other 
exercises. It must be remembered, as a general rule 
for the use of the Montessori exercises, and in gen- 
eral in the training of little children, that no pro- 
longed attempt should ever be made to coax them 
to continue an exercise which does not interest them. 
If they show no spontaneous interest, they are not 
ready for it, and time is only wasted by any attempt 
to force their inclination. When they are ready, 
they can learn in ten minutes what three hours of 
dreary enforced practice was not able to teach them. 

EXERCISE FOUR 

EXERCISES FOUR, FIVE AND SIX ARE ALSO FOR THE FUR- 
THER CULTIVATION OF THE CHILD'S VISUAL 
PERCEPTION OF DIFFERENCE IN 
DIMENSION AND FORM 

The Block Tower. — After the child has had a 
day or so of practice with the Geometric Insets and 
Buttoning Frames, allowing him to take them up 
and lay them down at will, it is time to bring 
out the blocks composing the Tower. The Tower 



42 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

is a series of ten wooden cubes, decreasing in 
size. Almost every nursery possesses such blocks, 
but few mothers are aware of their educational 
value or of the distinctive use to which blocks of 
graduated size should be put. Their use should not 
be confused with that of the ordinary " building 
blocks," — cube blocks of unvarying size. With the 
Tower blocks there are definite problems of classi- 
fication and discrimination to be solved, and to get 
the benefit of them, the child must use them in the 
one correct way. 

The mother builds up the Tower before the 
child's eyes, placing the largest block first, then the 
next smaller one, and so on down to the tiny little 
cube at the top. Then she knocks it all down, and if 
her child is the average child, he needs no more 
incentive to duplicate the performance and to begin 
to educate himself as to graduations of size. When 
he begins to construct the Tower himself, the dim- 
cult thing for the mother to do is to avoid giving 
him elaborate instructions: "No, no, Jimmy — not 
that one — that's not the next size — don't you see 
the one by your hand is bigger?" etc., etc., etc. The 
only good Jimmy can get of this exercise is by learn- 
ing to see for himself which is the bigger block, 
and to do this his mother must let him alone. She 
need not be surprised if he makes one odd mistake 
continually, even after he has learned quite deftly 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 43 

to construct the Tower. A great many children find 
it difficult to begin the Tower with the biggest block. 
They begin it with the next biggest, and, when they 
have finished, find that they cannot place the largest 
one without tearing down the whole structure. The 
psychological processes involved in this mistake are 
too complicated to explain here. I mention it, lest 
some anxious mother should think her own three- 
year-old especially deficient in the capacity to dis- 
tinguish between sizes. 

One exercise that can be profitably carried out 
is to give the Tower to the child and have him 
carry it, let us say, from one part of the room to 
another. In all probability, his first attempt will 
be far from successful. Let him take his own time 
in the rebuilding of it, and then make another 
attempt. Finally, he will be able to carry it very 
successfully from one part of the room to another, 
thus showing the self-control that is developed. 
Many mothers have also found that the child is 
interested in the blindfold exercises with the Tower. 
This exercise merely affords another means of devel- 
oping the different senses. 

EXERCISE FIVE 

Broad Staie. — After the Tower, the next exer- 
cise is the Broad Stair. It is a set of ten rectangu- 
lar wooden blocks, decreasing in height and width, 



44 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

length only being constant. This is another of the 
visual perception exercises. Here it may be well 
to mention that when a new exercise is given a child, 
the older ones are by no means taken away. They 
are left in the nursery, where he can get at them 
himself whenever he wishes to, and the new ones 
simply added to the store of his riches. Often, when 
the more elaborate exercises are quite mastered, a 
child will take pleasure in returning for a time 
to the simpler old friends with which he began. He 
should be allowed to do this quite as he wishes, his 
own instinct being a sure and accurate guide to 
what is best for him in this respect. He is doing 
what we all like to do occasionally — he is " review- 
ing" what he has learned, and making sure of his 
grasp on something which he has not thought of 
for some time. 

The Broad Stair is brought out in the same quiet 
manner with which the child has been introduced 
to his other Montessori " playthings." The mother 
arranges the blocks in regular order starting either 
with the biggest or the smallest, and laying the 
others side by side until a regular stair is con- 
structed. Then she mixes the blocks up, and goes 
away. The child, if he is ready for this exercise, 
at once takes it up, and in struggling to repeat his 
mother's feat, constructs the stair, intellectually as 
well as physically, and learns a new variety of 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 45 

dimension. Since all these blocks are the same 
length, and only differ in height and thickness, his 
problem is one degree more difficult than in the 
construction of the Tower. 

It should be remembered about these blocks, as 
about all Montessori apparatus, that they should be 
used for the purpose for which they are intended 
and for no other. The child should always have, in 
addition, an ordinary set of plain building blocks, 
with which he can play in any way he pleases, and 
if he begins to "make houses, " etc., with his Mon- 
tessori blocks, his little mind, incapable of more 
than one idea at a time, should be redirected to the 
regular exercise involving the dimensions of these 

blocks. 

EXERCISE SIX 

The Long Stair. — After the Tower and the 
Stair comes the third set of blocks, or rods, called 
the Long Stair. This is the most important of the 
three sets, as it is the foundation for instruction 
in arithmetic. With this set of short rectangular 
rods, the child learns, as he grows older, a number 
of the simpler processes of numeration. At first 
they are presented to the child just as a series of 
rods differing in length, the smallest one being one- 
tenth of the length of the longest one. The mother 
builds up the series, having the child notice that 
all the rods are red on one end, and that the stairs 



46 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

have a regular number of red and blue spaces from 
one to ten, or from the bottom to the top of the 
stairs. Then the series is knocked over, the rods 
mixed up, and the child left to put it together again 
himself. Children who cannot definitely count can 
often manage this series, and it is the greatest pleas- 
ure for the child who has just learned to count 
to be able to verify his numbers in this concrete 
way. For the present, this is all that is done with 
the Long Stair, but as the child progresses and 
develops, it will be found one of the most valuable 
parts of the apparatus, because the rods can be 
combined in many different ways, and illustrate in 
the plainest and most unmistakable manner many 
of the simpler processes of mathematics — addition, 
subtraction, etc. But this all comes later, and after 
the child has mastered other of the apparatus. Per- 
haps the mother will ask why Dr. Montessori uses 
ten blocks for each series, or, in short, what is the 
reason for these series. The child learns by com- 
parisons, contrasts and classifications, just as the 
adult does. It is much easier for him to compre- 
hend the different dimensions when he has the means 
of comparing blocks with others which vary in size. 
In short, the child understands the relation between 
the different blocks when presented in this manner. 
Order of Exercises to Be Modified According 
to Circumstances. — It is not desirable that we give 



USE OP THE APPARATUS 47 

directions for the exact use and the order of suc- 
cession of the remainder of the apparatus. Chil- 
dren differ so widely that the mother will be forced 
to depend somewhat on her own judgment and inti- 
mate knowledge of the child. She will have grasped 
by this time the purpose of the exercises with the 
Montessori apparatus, which is to give the child 
the fullest possible control over his own body and 
will-power. The order of exercises as hereafter 
indicated is to be followed with any ordinary child, 
but this must be modified according to circumstances. 

EXERCISE SEVEN 
DEVELOPING THE SENSE OF TOUCH 

;Sandpapek Boaed Number One. — As a rule, the 
next piece of apparatus to be taken up is the Sand- 
paper Board, a small board, one-half of which is 
smooth and the other half covered with sandpaper. 
This fixes the child's attention on the difference 
between surfaces. Sometimes this is one of the very 
first apparatus to be used, as a distinction between 
rough and smooth is apt to be one which arouses 
the interest of a very little child. His mother takes 
the board in her lap, or lays it on the child's 
small table, and draws the little finger-tips over the 
smoothly planed board, saying at the same time, 
" smooth, smooth." Then she draws the finger-tips 



48 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

(always from left to right) over the rough sand- 
paper, saying, " rough, rough.'' The child very soon 
associates the sound with the sensation, to which 
his finger-tips are more alive than are deadened 
adult fingers, and says himself, as he touches the two 
surfaces, " smooth, smooth — rough, rough." After 
this distinction has been thoroughly learned (it may 
take only one lesson, or it may take two or three 
days), it is a good plan to try to see if he can make 
the distinction accurately when he is not looking at 
the board, purely by the sense of touch. The Italian 
children are always blindfolded for this exercise, 
and seem to enjoy it, but the American children 
with whom I have had experience have preferred 
merely to look away, up at the ceiling. The finger- 
tips should then be passed, always with the utmost 
delicacy and with the lightest possible touch, over 
the two surfaces, and the child asked to give the 
right name to what he is touching. At the first 
sign of mental fatigue or confusion, this exercise 
should be discontinued, although it may be taken 
up again after a half -hour's rest and change of 
occupation. The child's fingers should always be 
trained from left to right. If the child from the 
very beginning is directed to trace from left to 
right, he has effected the first simple muscular 
co-ordination that he will use a little later in writ- 
ing, as we always write from left to right. In all 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 49 

probability, the child will enjoy touching the smooth 
surface very much, and it is interesting to note the 
change of expression on his face as he changes from 
the smooth to the rough. 

EXERCISE EIGHT 

Sandpaper Board Number Two. — When this 
simpler of the sandpaper boards has been mastered, 
the child may go to the next form, in which the 
sandpaper is arranged in alternate strips on the 
smoothly planed board. This is, of course, more 
complicated, and the blindfolded child may soon 
"lose his head" and not be able to distinguish accu- 
rately between the sensations. He should be encour- 
aged to take plenty of time, and to allow his finger- 
tips to play freely across the surface. When he 
can tell quickly, accurately, and without mental 
fatigue, whether he is touching a rough or smooth 
strip, the beginning of the child's education of his 
tactile sense is well made. He has taken the first 
step, which counts so much, and will go on steadily 
to more complicated conquests. In this exercise, 
the child is also learning to follow a raised surface 
with his little fingers. This is of great value to 
him as a preliminary to the sandpaper letters. After 
he has mastered this simple exercise, he has one of 
the first requisites necessary for successful work 
with the sandpaper letters. 



50 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

EXERCISE NINE 

FOR THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 'S 
TACTILE SENSE 

In the formal Montessori apparatus, the small 
cabinet containing seven drawers is filled with 
various fabrics. These fabrics consist of two pieces 
of the following materials: velvet, silk, wool, fine 
and coarse linen, and fine and coarse cotton. It is 
very important that absolutely pure fabrics should 
be used for these first exercises; in short, the mother 
should be quite sure that the linen she is using is 
not partly cotton. Of course, if the regular Mon- 
tessori apparatus is used, all of these precautions 
are provided for. These can be supplemented by 
any ragbag, and from the infinitely diversified fab- 
rics used in the furnishing of any home. When 
this " playing" with fabrics is first begun, the child 
is allowed to handle the different pieces of cloth, 
and his attention is called to the difference in their 
texture. He is told their names, one or two at a 
time, the mother taking the greatest pains to pro- 
nounce the words clearly, distinctly, and slowly. 
When he has learned to distinguish them by look- 
ing at them, the next step, as with the sandpaper 
boards, is to distinguish them by the sense of touch 
only. The child can be blindfolded, or can look 
up at the ceiling, and, sitting in front of a mixed-up 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 51 

pile of the pieces, takes them up one at a time, pro- 
nouncing their names. When he has done this 
enough times so that he is quite sure of himself 
(usually after a week of playing with the pieces 
at intervals), he can go on to some of the fascinating 
" games" to be played with them. If there are other 
children in the family, the playing of " games" is 
easier, but even for an only child they are possible. 

Supplementary Exeecises and Games Involv- 
ing the Sense of Touch. — First. — The pieces are 
divided into two piles, each having the same number 
of pieces of the same fabrics. Then the mother 
picks out a piece of velvet, without naming it, asks 
the child if he can find a piece like it in his pile 
(of course, without looking). This is always pro- 
ductive of much excited fumbling in the pieces, and 
much delicate fingering of them by sensitive little 
finger-tips, and finally much triumph when the 
matching bit of velvet is discovered. It may be 
said in passing that it is usually well to begin with 
either velvet or silk, as those fabrics are so markedly 
different from others that the problem is easier for 
a beginner. If two children play this "game," the 
victor is the one who first finds the piece of velvet 
without looking at his pile. 

Second. — The mother's ingenuity can devise many 
other variations on this game, and can see to it 
that the child goes on observing the fabrics used in 



52 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

different parts of the house, the materials of which 
his own dresses are made, the stuff used in uphol- 
stery, table linen, curtains, etc. He can also be 
told the names of the different materials used in 
building a house — wood, iron, tin, glass, stone, and 
brick; and the materials of cooking utensils — china, 
tin, copper, etc. There is an infinite variety of 
material in the humblest home which can be the 
most valuable educational apparatus for the well- 
trained child, even in quite early childhood. Once 
the child's interest in this problem is aroused, he 
will in most cases go on educating himself, and all 
the parent needs to do is to have the patience 
necessary to answer innumerable questions. 

Third. — Games with Balls, Squares, Triangles, 
etc. — Another "game" for developing the sense of 
touch with materials other than fabrics is played 
in the Casa dei Bambini with solid wooden geo- 
metric forms of differing shapes — balls, squares, 
triangles, etc. The child is blindfolded, and pulls 
these things, one at a time, out of a bag, identifying 
them solely by fingering them over. In the home 
this can be " played" with any material at hand 
with which the child is familiar. He can be blind- 
folded and try to identify objects in a miscellaneous 
heap on the table before him, consisting of toy 
animals, spoons, forks, brushes, combs, dolls, trays — 
anything in the room which will not hurt him, and 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 53 

is not breakable. Very little children always expe- 
rience the greatest joy in thus proving that they 
can see "with their fingers," and learn to receive 
extremely accurate impressions through their sensi- 
tive and cultivated little finger-tips. 

EXERCISE TEN 
TRAINING THE SENSE OF HEARING 

Sound Boxes. — But the sense of touch is not 
the only one of the child's five senses which can 
be improved by direct training. The sense of hear- 
ing is greatly developed and made more serviceable 
for after years, if given reasonable practice. The 
Montessori apparatus provides the wooden Sound 
Boxes, filled with different substances — sand, gravel, 
flaxseed, stones, etc., which give out sounds differing 
in quality and loudness, when shaken. The child's 
attention can be thus fixed, for the first time, on 
a definite attempt to distinguish between loud and 
low noises, as he shakes these little boxes close to 
his ear, and attempts to arrange them in order 
according to their degree of noise. 

In all probability, the child has heard noises of 
this character, but he has not had an opportunity 
to compare or to contrast such noises. This exercise 
affords an opportunity for such discrimination. As 
a rule, the children take a great deal of interest 



54 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

in this simple exercise and they show a marked 
difference in their ability to discriminate between 
the various substances. 

Supplementary Exercises and "Games." — But 
this simple exercise needs to be supplemented by 
other "games" which fix the attention on sounds. 
These can be devised most easily with "hide-and- 
seek" games. The mother hides and blows very 
softly a little horn, by means of which the child 
traces her; or she calls the child's name in the 
lowest possible whispers, as he, blindfolded, tries 
to locate her in the room by his hearing. Any of 
the common children's games, "blindman's buff," 
"still-pond-no-more-moving," etc., played with a 
blindfold, are excellent exercises for the same pur- 
pose of sharpening the hearing and training the, 
child to receive accurate impressions through his 
ears. 

Out of doors, long-distance calling may be used 
for this purpose, to accustom the child to determine 
the direction from which any noise comes. 

As to musical sounds, most children who are 
young enough for this Montessori training are too 
young to distinguish pitch at all accurately. Of 
music they receive practically nothing but rhythm, 
although they are fond of marching to a tune which 
has strongly marked time, and this is a good exer- 
cise for them, in its place. 



A spontaneous 
writing lesson. These 
children have reach- 
ed the point where, 
as Montessori says, 
they "explode into 
writing." 








% 



■ I-.--: ; 



'* 
X 



Montessori Long Stair Game 



' 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 55 

EXERCISE ELEVEN 

PREPAEATOEY EXEECISE FOE TEACHING THE CHILD TO 
WEITE 

Plane Geometeic Insets. — Very soon after the 
child's first introduction to the Montessori appa- 
ratus, he can begin his use of the Plane Geometric 
Insets. These sets consist of a six-drawer cabinet, 
thirty-six geometrical insets, and a pattern in an 
adjustable frame, making possible any desired com- 
bination of forms. The insets are made of pieces of 
smooth wood, painted blue, cut in different shapes, 
and with a little knob-like handle in the center. 
These insets fit into holes or openings cut in a 
rectangular natural colored piece of wood. The 
first of the series of six drawers contains insets of 
strongly contrasted forms; the second drawer con- 
tains a series of six Polygons; the third drawer, a 
series of six Circles, diminishing in size; the fourth 
drawer, a series of Quadrilaterals containing one 
square and five rectangles; the fifth drawer, a series 
of six Triangles, and the sixth drawer contains Oval, 
Ellipse, Flower Forms, etc. These are so important 
and have such a vital part to play in the training 
of the child to write, that the mother should be 
especially careful in the way they are used. The 
entire thirty-six different shapes should not, of 
course, be put before the child at the beginning 



56 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

but only a drawer of the most strongly contrasted 
shapes— triangles, oblong, etc. He should be taught 
at the. very start (as in the case of the solid geo- 
metric insets) to aid his sight by touch. While 
he holds the inset by the little knob with his left 
hand, he traces the outline of the inset with his 
right forefinger, and from left to right, or in the 
direction in which writing is done. Then, while 
still holding the inset, he traces around the outline 
of the depression into which he thinks the inset he 
holds would fit. In finding the right opening, he 
is guided more by his finger-tips than by his eyes. 
It is quite important to establish this habit of tra- 
cing the outline with his fingers, as it has a vital 
bearing on learning to write. 

As the child masters the tray of the more simple 
forms so that he finds it easy for him to place the 
insets in the corresponding opening, the less simple 
forms should be given him, a few at a time. After 
learning to distinguish between a triangle and a 
circle quickly and accurately, the next day he should 
be given two triangles and two circles of different 
sizes, to sharpen his sense of shape and dimension. 
After a time, usually a fortnight or so, he should 
be able to replace in the correct openings six tri- 
angles of differing shapes, and six circles of differ- 
ing sizes. When he has learned to do that, he has 
attained a mastery of his little brain and a capacity 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 57 

to make it work accurately, of which his mother 
may well be proud. 

It is perhaps well to give here the warning which 
can never be too often sounded — not to force the 
child's attention to this, any more than to any other 
problem. He is the best judge of when mental 
fatigue sets in, and at the least sign of inattention, 
the tray of insets should be put away and some 
romping game outdoors played, or a quiet story told. 
The mother is so apt to become fascinated with the 
rapid advance of the child's mentality that she 
can hardly forbear urging him a trifle to go a step 
or so beyond his natural inclination. 

EXERCISE TWELVE 
REPLACING THE INSETS BLINDFOLDED 

When the insets have become old friends, it is 
well to try blindfolding the child, and setting him 
the new problem of replacing the geometric forms 
by the sense of touch only. Here it is well to go 
back again to first principles and to begin once 
more with the easiest forms, until he grows accus- 
tomed to depending on his touch only. This is 
splendid practice, and a child who has had it grows 
astonishingly keen in his capacity to take in accu- 
rate impressions from his finger-tips. How valuable 
the ability to work without looking at what is 



58 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

being done, can be estimated from the experience 
of almost any variety of band-worker. The old 
grandmother who knits without once looking at her 
needle can work all day long without a particle of 
fatigue, while the knitter who needs to be verifying 
each stitch by her eyes soon tires them out and 
must either stop working or suffer a violent head- 
ache. The stenographer who writes by touch has 
a tremendous advantage over the other who needs 
to use her eyes. A large part of our modern eye- 
strain and nervous headaches, and even nervous 
prostration, comes, so the doctors say, from the 
constant use of the eyes in processes which might 
be cared for by the other senses, if they were only 
well trained. So that the Montessori child, learning 
to distinguish between his insets without looking at 
them, is learning a mental habit which will be of 
incalculable benefit to him throughout life. 

Dr. Montessori lays great stress upon the value 
of the work with these wooden geometric insets. 
They are so practical and at the same time so fas- 
cinating that the child learns a great deal in work- 
ing with them. The primary object is that the 
child should learn form; that is, that he should 
see the difference between various objects. Ordi- 
narily, this is a very tedious task for the child, 
but Dr. Montessori, by means of her self-correcting 
apparatus, has made a game that appeals to normal 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 59 

children. The mother should not be at all surprised 
if after a few weeks of play with this apparatus 
the child should begin to point out various objects 
in his environment, comparing them with certain 
insets he has learned to know. These exercises 
are very important. The mother should take the 
care and the time that may be necessary for the 
child to reap the greatest benefits from the work. 

EXERCISE THIRTEEN 

with which the child's comprehension passes 

from solid objects to the plane line, from 

the concrete to the abstract 

Plane G-eometric Figures Eeproduced in Three 
Series of Cards. — After the final mastery of the 
geometric insets, the child is given a series of cards, 
representing the same forms as those of his insets. 
In the first of these three series, the forms are cut 
out of solid blue paper and mounted on white cards; 
in the second, the forms are cut out of heavy line 
drawings and mounted on the cards, and in the 
third, the outline or form is represented only by 
a thin blue line, such as is drawn by any pencil. 

The child mixes up, say, six or eight of these 
cards, and six or eight corresponding insets, and 
then sets himself the task of putting the insets on 
the corresponding card. Here he has not the sense 



60 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

of touch to guide him, and learns gradually the 
meaning of the line, passing from the solid blue 
form to the form merely drawn in outline. 

After the child has played with these various 
cards for some time he will have acquired a very 
definite idea of symbolism. That is, it will be com- 
paratively easy for him to understand how a series 
of lines can stand for an object. Ordinarily, it is 
not difficult for the child to see the connection 
between a photograph and an object, but with an 
abstract line it is entirely different. "What is there 
in the symbols c-a-t that would connect them with 
a cat ? Dr. Montessori believes that the child 
should understand symbolism before the alphabet 
is taken up. When the child has mastered all of 
the various exercises with these geometric cards, 
and thus gained a definite understanding of sym- 
bolism, it will be comparatively easy for him to 
get the relation between a written word and the 
object which that word represents. Dr. Mon- 
tessori at all times goes from the simple to the 
complex, from the concrete to the abstract. With 
this simple explanation I trust the mother will 
understand the significance of these exercises. 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 61 

EXERCISE FOURTEEN 

involving the fikst use of the pencil 
Plane Geometrical Insets Made in Metal. — 
And with this recognition of the line, might go 
very well with the average child the beginning of 
the use of the pencil. This exercise is done with 
the Plane Geometric Insets made of metal. 
Accompanying the metal insets in the formal 
Montessori apparatus are two wooden trays with 
sloping tops, large enough to hold three of the 
metal insets and intended to be placed by the 
child on his own table. It is, of course, unnec- 
essary to point out that a small table and chair, 
just the right size for a child, are essentials in 
Montessori or any other right training for child- 
hood. The child puts a piece of white paper on 
the wooden tray or on his own table, then places 
the square inset over the paper and lifts out the 
central piece by its little knob. The white paper 
shows through the hole (see x in illustration) in 
the shape of the inset. The child is given a 
pencil and is shown, once, very briefly and simply, 
how to hold it and how to trace around the out- 
line of the inset. He is apt to make bad work 
of this at first, as this is the very first use of 
the pencil, but his interest almost certainly carries 
him through the first difficulties. To begin with 



62 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

he simply traces the outline, lifts off the metal 
inset and admires the design on the paper 
beneath. The metal edge of the inset is a guide 
to his staggering little pencil and before long he 
will be able to make a good, clear outline, join- 
ing the ends neatly. 

EXERCISE FIFTEEN 
THE USE OF COLORED CRAYONS 

First Lesson in Drawing. — When this has 
been accomplished the child is furnished with a 
box of colored crayons, and invited to fill in the 
" picture" he has made with strokes of his 
crayon. The fact that he is working in color 
stimulates his interest, and few children need 
more spur to advance than the simple permission 
to use the crayons. At first, and for many days, 
his efforts to fill in the outlines will be ludicrous 
in their inaccuracy. He should not be corrected, 
and should be allowed to pass from one form to 
another as often as he pleases, being supplied 
with an unlimited amount of paper and leisure 
for this new undertaking. Little by little, as he 
works at this accomplishment, along with other 
Montessori " games" he begins to "get the hang 
of it," in our vernacular phrase. The lines 
become more and more parallel, fewer and fewer 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 63 

go wildly outside the line enclosing the outline, 
and finally the geometric form is shown in color 
on the white paper almost as though it had been 
printed. This advance is not rapid, however, in 
the case of most children, and nothing should be 
done to hurry it. Occasionally a child gets tired 
of the whole process and will • play with other 
things for several days without recurring to his 
''drawing," although on the other hand, some chil- 
dren are, from the first, so fascinated by the prob- 
lem that they can hardly let it alone. These 
exercises afford the first direct preparation for 
writing and design. From the very beginning 
the child acquires a free, easy muscular move- 
ment. After these exercises the work of free 
designing with crayons and water colors may be 
successfully taken up. 

Meal-times and Xap-times Not to Be I 
fered With. — The child should be allowed to 
choose his own time for working at this (pro- 
vided, of course, that it does not interfere with 
some necessary regulations of the household, meal- 
times or nap-times) and to spend as much or as 
little time over it as he wishes, although if there 
seems any likelihood that he has really forgotten 
it, his attention may be called to it again. 



64 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

EXERCISE SIXTEEN 
TRAINING THE EYE; THE MATCHING OF COLOES 

Color Boxes and Coloe "Games/' — At about 
the same stage of development that the geometric 
insets are first given to a child, the color boxes 
can be shown him and the color " games" begun. 
The color boxes are sets of spools, wound with 
silk of varying shades, eight of the main colors, 
and eight shades of each. At first the child is 
shown only two strongly contrasting colors, red 
and blue, for instance. The name is pronounced 
clearly and distinctly, holding up the correspond- 
ing color. When the child has grasped this the 
colors are allowed to lie on the table and the 
mother says, "Give me red," or "Give me blue." 
When the child has progressed this far (this may 
be the next day, or even two or three days after 
the first introduction) the teacher or mother holds 
up a spool and asks, "What is this?" When the 
child can answer correctly, "blue" or "red," he 
has thoroughly learned those two colors and can 
progress to another one. When the eight main 
colors have been learned in this way, the child 
can begin to match them. Four spools are laid 
on the table, two red and two blue (of course of 
exactly the same shade). The child picks out the 
two red ones and lays them side by side, and then 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 65 

does the same for the blue. From this he can go 
by degrees until there are sixteen spools on the 
table, eight pairs, which he must put together. 
This is a "game" which seldom ever fails to 
arouse the interest and attention of the most 
lethargic child. And this also soon shows the 
mother if there is any color-blindness present. 

EXERCISE SEVENTEEN 

Differentiation of Coloes. — After the match- 
ing has been mastered, the next step is to differ- 
entiate between light and dark shades of the same 
color, dark red and light pink, for instance, or 
dark and light blue. This goes in pairs at first 
also, but little by little, as the child's accuracy 
increases, he may go up to the eight shades of 
the different colors. As a rule, children acquire 
an appreciation and accuracy in handling colors 
which astonishes their ill-trained elders. Some 
Montessori children have become so proficient that 
they can "carry a color in the eye," as it is 
called. That is, they can look at a spool of a 
certain shade of purple, go across the room to a 
pile of spools and pick out the color matching it. 
This is a feat of which few elders would be 
capable. 

Games and Practical Application. — With these 
color spools, a variety of "games" can be 



66 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

played, which any mother can invent, according 
to the number and age of the children wishing 
to play. They are all variations on .the principle 
which is used in the game of "authors," and can 
be made simple or hard as circumstances direct. 
Furthermore, as in the treatment of fabrics, the 
child's attention is awakened to the presence of 
color in everything about him, and his interest 
aroused in the problem of determining the color 
of the carpets, curtains, dresses, carriages, shoes, 
etc., which he sees in his every-day life. In my 
own family, a child of three-and-a-half came to 
me the other day saying, "I've been looking 
around and I can tell the color of everything in 
this room, except the looking-glass, and I cannot 
tell the color of that!" 

The reason that Dr. Montessori uses these 
little spools upon which the silk is wound is that 
the child's attention is primarily directed to the 
color and not to the object. The spools in them- 
selves are very unattractive while the richly col- 
ored silk is just the opposite. Silk thread is used 
because it gives a deeper, richer color, at the same 
time is more practical and makes possible the 
various gradations. Too much importance can- 
not be placed upon the developing of the chro- 
matic sense in early childhood. If the child at an 
early age acquires a deep interest in shades and 



USE OP THE APPARATUS 67 

tints of colorings, lie will not only be able to 
appreciate his environment much more, but this 
knowledge and appreciation of color will be of 
inestimable value to him in later years. The 
ethical element in such training is also very 
important. If the child is taught to see the 
beautiful and to appreciate it even in his early 
years it must have a marked effect upon his later 
life. Psychologists tell us that we are the crea- 
tures of habit and it is only reasonable to believe 
that if these very desirable habits can be formed 
in early childhood they must be very beneficial 
when the child reaches maturity. 

EXERCISE EIGHTEEN 

SPECIAL PHYSICAL AND GYMNASTIC EXERCISES FOE 
THE YOUNG CHILD 

In connection with all these exercises with the 
ftlontessori apparatus there are a number of other 
'exercises, chiefly gymnastic, which should be con- 
stantly in use. As soon as the child can walk 
at all, every effort should be made to teach him 
further and more definitely the art of equilib- 
rium of his body. When we walk we continually 
balance our weight so that we do not fall down, 
and the more accurately and unconsciously we do 
this, the better we walk. Now, bodily poise is 



68 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

one of the very important factors in bodily grace 
and even in strength, certainly in comfort. The 
average child does not balance his body well, 
instinctively. He needs training, and he is eager 
and anxious for it. 

1. The Chalk Line Exercise. — In the Casa dei 
Bambini the exercise used for this need is 
arranged very simply by means of a long chalk 
line drawn on the floor. The children are invited 
to see how accurately they can walk along this 
line without stepping off. At first the little tots 
cannot manage this at all. Later they learn to 
walk very slowly along the line, and later, when 
they are four or five, to run as swiftly as deer 
along this line without swerving once from it. A 
child who can do that will be able, unconsciously, 
to walk straight across a room to a chair, with- 
out tripping or falling over the furniture. 

2. Walking the Two-by-Foue. — A modification 
of this exercise can be arranged out-of-doors by lay- 
ing a long piece of wood (what is usually known 
as a " two-by-four" or a " piece of studding") 
down on the ground and permitting the child to 
try to walk along this without falling off. He 
is usually ready to spend a long time at this 
exercise, and to return to it repeatedly. The bene- 
fit derived from it is beyond calculating. 

3. Rope-Balancing and Walking Backwaed. — 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 69 

If a length of rope can be hung up where the 
child can reach the dangling end of it he will 
devise for himself a variety of exercises in bal- 
ancing which will greatly increase his mastery of 
his body. Another exercise of great value for 
little children, is in walking backward. At first 
they need to be helped, for their little brains are 
so unused to reversing the processes of ordinary 
walking that they are quite helpless, but after a 
comparatively short time, they learn this new 
trick and practice it with delight. If possible 
every small child should have a little swing, just 
the right height for him, and a tiny spring- 
board ending over a pile of hay or anything soft, 
from which he may jump and learn to balance 
his body in the air. He should also be encour- 
aged to jump, not from stairs or any other ele- 
vation, for that means danger to the spine, but 
from one rug to another, for instance. It is sur- 
prising what advances in physical strength and 
mastery of his muscles is made by a child who is 
provided with such exercises. 

4. The Baby Ball. — Most children of three are 
too young to have the least capacity for throw- 
ing or catching a ball, but if a ball is hung on a 
long string and tossed to them, the string retards 
the motion just enough to make it possible for 
their little brains to set their muscles in action, 



70 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

and they will play with great joy and profit for 
a long time, at this variety of "babyball." 

5. Water Play. — One exercise, which always 
delights children, and improves their table-manners 
insensibly, is playing with water. This, too, is 
rather hard to manage indoors, although not 
impossible. The child is furnished with a basin 
of water, a big spoon, and receptacles of various 
sizes and shapes to fill; bottles, large and small; 
glasses, cups, salt-cellars, etc. He is almost sure 
to spend much time happily engaged in filling up 
and emptying these vessels, and learning a great 
deal about the nature of water contained in recep- 
tacles. A child who has " played" in this way 
with water, for half an hour a day, during a 
month or two, will spill water from his glass at 
table, or be untidy in the use of his spoon, just 
as infrequently as the ordinary adult. (He has 
learned the trick! And he has had a great deal 
of fun while he learned it). His mother will find 
that he takes no more pleasure in being " messy" 
over his meals than she does, and as soon as he 
is able to avoid accidents at table, will have pre- 
sentable table manners. 

6. Encourage Child's Inventiveness. — Of course 
the greatest freedom should be allowed for any 
exercise (not injurious to the child) which his 
invention hits upon. The action so common among 



USE OF THE APPAEATUS 71 

little children of throwing themselves on a chair 
or stool and kicking their swinging feet in the air 
is an excellent exercise for the muscles of the legs 
and should never be discouraged. To climb up and 
down a short length of ladder, with the rounds 
set at a distance appropriate for short legs, is also 
very beneficial, although hard to arrange for the 
unfortunate child who lives in a flat, without access 
to a bit of out-doors all his own. 

7. Should Share Household Work. — A child 
who is being trained in the Montessori system 
should also, as soon as it is at all possible, begin 
to share in the work of the household. If he is 
provided with a small broom and dustpan, there is 
no reason why he should not keep his room fresh 
and clean, and also clean up any litter of paper or 
dirt which he makes in the course of the day. 
Setting the table is a singularly good exercise for 
a little child, although, of course, it is enough to 
begin with, if he does only a small part of the 
whole operation. The important element should be 
that what he does, he does entirely himself. If 
he is set to put a spoon at each place, he should 
be left (after due explanation, as brief as possible) 
to wrestle with the problem and to solve it with 
his own unaided invention. Later he can be given 
all the silver to put in place, and as he learns in 
his Montessori exercises, mastery over his muscles, 



72 THE MONTBSSORI MANUAL 

can be entrusted with china and glass at four and 
five years of age, which an untrained child of ten 
or eleven would be almost sure to break. 

Pains should be taken to allow even the very 
little child to watch, from a comfortable position, 
any household operation in which he shows interest. 
Fortunate, indeed, the child whose mother still 
cooks and sews and bakes and washes, and allows 
her children to aid in these processes. Such chil- 
dren receive Montessori training without any 
formal apparatus. 

SUMMAEY OF CHILD'S ATTAINMENTS IN THE MAS- 

teky of Himself and His Woeld. — But, to return 
to those formal and ingeniously devised "play- 
things" which so wonderfully and insensibly lead 
the little child to a mastery of his world and him- 
self, let us suppose that the child for whom the 
box of apparatus came into the home, has now 
been " playing" with the different pieces of appa- 
ratus described in the preceding paragraphs for 
about three or four months, longer if he was only 
three when he began, a shorter time if he was 
older. He has learned to replace the geometric 
insets blindfolded by the sense of touch only, to 
distinguish fabrics and materials, to build the 
Tower, the Broad Stair and the Long Stair, to 
match colors, to distinguish between noises of vary- 
ing intensity, to balance himself deftly, to manage 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 73 

a glass of water. His mother may very well con- 
sider that it is now time to begin to teach him the 
beginning of reading and writing, although, as a 
matter of fact, the beginning was taught when he 
first learned the distinction between rough sand- 
paper and smoothly planed board. 

EXERCISE NINETEEN 
LEARNING TO WRITE AT THE AGE OF FOUR 

Sandpaper Letters. — The child is told that 
there is a new game to play and the little paste- 
board box containing the famous Montessori sand- 
paper letters is brought out. This alphabet is 
composed of letters in plain, round script, cut out 
of black sand, or emery, paper and pasted upon 
smooth white cards. Here at once the child's past 
practice in learning about objects through touch- 
ing them, as well as looking at them, comes into 
play. He is shown a letter, the mother pronounces 
the sound of it clearly, and shows him how to 
trace around it with his finger in the way one 
would write it. He should touch it very lightly, 
as he has been taught to do with all his work, 
and should, at first, only trace the letters when 
some one is watching him, to make sure he does 
not do it backward, or upsidedown. Make sure 
that he knows the vocal sound of the letter or 



74 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

figure he is tracing. Most children of three-and- 
a-half or four have seen so much of writing 
among the adults of their acquaintance that their 
curiosity is deeply aroused as to the mysterious 
process and they are delighted with the prospect 
of learning something about it. They need, as a 
rule, no further incentive than the statement that 
this is the beginning of their learning how to 
write. 

Testing the Child's Comprehension. — As soon as 
a few letters are learned, the teacher, or mother, 
should make sure of the child's grasp of them in 
the same way she tested his knowledge of colors. 
She lays down four or five on the table and asks 
for a certain one. "Give me 'a,' please," or 
"Give me 'b.'" When the child can do this 
quickly and surely, she next holds one up and 
asks him what it is. When he can identify those 
first letters he can be allowed to pass on to 
others, and as the number even in our alphabet is 
quite limited, it will not be long before he has 
mastered all the letters. 

Begins to Recognize and Spell Words. — 'Before 
that time, however, if his interest in the process 
is lively, he can begin to recognize words, and to 
compose them. If he has learned "p" and "a" 
he can compose the familiar word "papa," and 
will, in most cases, do this of his own accord if 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 75 

his attention is called to the pronunciation of the 
word. If his mother says "How would you make 
this word?" and then pronounces it very slowly, 
separating the sounds distinctly, the child will 
analyze the word into its component parts. "It 
begins with 'p,' " she says, giving the phonetic 
sound and not the name of the letter. Of course 
the child reaches instinctively for the "p," and 
thereafter recognizes the sound of "a," puts the 
two together and looks on delighted at the first word 
of his composition. 

EXERCISE TWENTY 

Learning to Eead the Regular Movable 
Alphabet. — At this point the child should be pre- 
sented with the Regular Movable Alphabet of cut- 
out script letters in stiff paper. 

.These come in two large, flat, pasteboard boxes 
with partitions dividing the same into separate 
compartments for each letter. There are four or 
five duplicates of each letter, making a like num- 
ber of complete alphabets and, of course, addi- 
tional letters can easily be made at home, if more 
are needed. These letters are not pasted on cards, 
like the sandpaper letters, and are easily han- 
dled and arranged as the child wishes, and with 
these begin his composition and recognition of 
words. He is not troubled, as in the old system, 



76 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

by the difficulty of forming the letters, as all he 
has had to do is to take them from the com- 
partments and make words with them, long before 
his little fingers have acquired the ability to 
handle a pencil surely and accurately. 

Practice Words. — Of course English-speaking 
children have a much harder time to compose 
words from letters than Italian children, whose 
language is phonetically written. The English- 
speaking mother who attempts to teach her own 
child how to write and read, will infallibly become 
a convert to the ideas of the Simple Spelling 
Board; but, since it is out of the question for 
the present to change the wild insanities of Eng- 
lish spelling, we must possess our souls in 
patience and exercise as much ingenuity as pos- 
sible in introducing our little one to the life-long 
burden of an illogically spelled language. It, is 
well for this purpose to choose for the first words, 
the very simplest ones, like "rat," "pin," "hen," 
"mama," "papa," "dog," etc., words which are 
not only within a child's natural comprehension, 
but which offer no difficulties in the way of con- 
sistent spelling. When the inevitable difficulties 
occur, the best that can be done is to rely on the 
naturally quick memory of childhood, and to fall 
back on the helpless statement that "it's spelled 
that way because that is the way it's spelled." 



USE OF THE APPAEATUS 77 

However, there is, even in English, quite a vocab- 
ulary of sensibly spelled words, which the child 
can acquire as a working beginning. 

EXERCISE TWENTY-ONE 
EEVIEW EXEECISES WITH APPAEATUS ALEEADY MASTEEED 

First. — But although he may from now on, 
"play" with the movable alphabet, the use of the 
sandpaper letters should be steadily continued, caus- 
ing him to trace them, as they are written, sev- 
eral times a day, if his interest allows. It is almost 
certain that he will ask to do this, as touching the 
letters brings home their form to his little brain 
much more certainly than merely looking at them. 
Sometimes children fail to recognize a letter when 
they look at it, although they can identify it per- 
fectly after their fingers have traced it. This, being 
one of the essential steps in writing, must not be 
neglected. Children in Montessori schools, even 
after they can write quite fluently, very frequently 
go through the tracing of the sandpaper letters to 
refresh their memories with an exact knowledge of 
the shape of each letter. 

Second. — At the same time that these exercises 
are being repeated as often as the child's interest 
makes possible, the exercises with "drawing," 
that is, tracing the outline of one of the 



78 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

geometric insets on the paper and filling it in with 
colored chalk, should also be steadily continued, for 
this tracing teaches the child the use of the pencil. 
Third. — The Explosion Into Writing. — I quote 
from A Montessori Mother a paragraph descri- 
bing the final success of these three exercises, "All 
these processes go on, day after day, side by 
side, all invisibly converging towards one end. The 
practice with the crayons, the recognition of the 
sandpaper letters by eye and touch, the revelation 
as to the formation of words with the movable alpha- 
bet, are so many roads leading to the painless acqui- 
sition of the art of writing. They draw nearer and 
nearer together, and then one day, quite sud- 
denly, the famous "Montessori explosion into 
writing" occurs. The teacher of experience can 
tell when this explosion is imminent. First, 
the parallel lines which the child makes to fill and 
color the geometric figures become singularly even 
and regular; second, acquaintance with the alphabet 
becomes so thorough that he recognizes the letters 
by sense of touch only; and, third, he increases in 
facility for composing words with the movable alpha- 
bet. The burst into spontaneous writing usually only 
comes after these three conditions are present. It 
is to be noted that for a long time after this explo- 
sion into writing, the children continue incessantly 
to go through the three preparatory steps, tracing 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 79 

with their fingers the sandpaper letters, filling in 
the geometric forms and composing with the movable 
alphabet. These are for them what scales are for 
the pianist, a necessary practice for " keeping the 
hand in." 

Fourth. — Cautions . to Be Observed. — There are 
several cautions to be expressed about this whole 
process of teaching a child to write and read by 
the Montessori method. The most important one is 
against hurry. Even more consistently and steadily 
than with the rest of the apparatus, the child's 
natural gait ought not to be in the slightest degree 
hastened by urging from outside. He will go, in 
any case, so very much more rapidly, easily and 
surely, than children in school, that urging him is 
not necessary. The temptation with a bright, quickly 
adaptable child is to attempt to "make a record." 
The mother remembers reading that in Montessori 
schools a child of four usually learns to write after 
about six weeks of preparation and that children 
of five usually spend only a month in the three 
exercises before they begin to write; and she is 
anxious that her child shall not fall behind. She 
should bear in mind two or three factors which 
make her problem different from that of the Casa 
dei Bambini. First, the Casa dei Bambini child 
is associated with other children, some of whom 
have already learned to write, before his very eyes. 



80 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

He lias examples and stimulus to efforts which the 
single American child, working alone, lacks, in the 
nature of things. Furthermore, the Directress of 
the Montessori Casa dei Bambini was specially 
trained for her undertaking, and has had a great 
deal of experience with all sorts of children; so 
that she is at an advantage compared to the Ameri- 
can mother taking up the method for the first time, 
and working out her own and her child's problems. 
There is no occasion for her to be discouraged by 
these facts, for success is almost sure, if she perse- 
veres and with the right spirit. The mother should 
always act deliberately, she should take the greatest 
pains to be sure that the child understands every 
step before he passes on to the next, and that he 
has thoroughly mastered one process before he is 
allowed to progress to another more complicated. 
Above all, she should refrain from forcing the child's 
attention in the slightest degree. 

EXERCISE TWENTY-TWO 

UNDIRECTED WORK; MAINTAINING THE CHILD'S NORMAL 
OR EVERYDAY LIFE 

All the time that this work with the drawing, 
and filling in of geometric forms, the tracing of 
the sandpaper letters and the composition of words 
with the movable alphabet is going on, the child's 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 81 

usual normal life should be continued. There should 
be plenty of undirected outdoor play, where the 
child's natural inventiveness has scope, " hide-and- 
seek" games, "tag," etc., with plenty of fun in the 
company of other children should be encouraged. 
There should be much reading to him of well- 
selected stories and poems suited to his age; with 
long hours of sleep, and a certain amount of helpful 
service about the household work. A "Montessori 
child" does not by any means signify a child who 
devotes most of his time to exercises with the formal 
"boughten" apparatus. 

Plant and Animal Pets. — He should have, if 
it is possible to arrange this, a plant or two of his 
own (even at the age of three) and a pet of his 
own, preferably a good-natured kitten, for he is 
rather young as yet for a puppy. He should assume 
the real responsibility for these plant and animal 
pets, caring for them himself. Later, he should 
have a little plot of ground, and learn from actual 
experience the wonder of growth from seeds. 

How the Child ' Learns Self-Care. — He should 
have in his own room, or in a corner of another's 
(if he has no room of his own) a tiny washstand, 
with a little bowl and pitcher, light enough for 
him to handle, and a mirror hung low enough for 
him to see if he has succeeded in getting his face 
clean. He should be allowed the time necessary to 



82 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

wash his face and hands, and should be taught, to 
empty the bowl and to keep his washstand neat 
and clean. If this habit is begun at an early age, 
it is not at all difficult for a very young child to 
acquire it very thoroughly, and to be more con- 
scientious about it, and similar matters of personal 
neatness, than many a half -grown boy or girl who 
have never been systematically trained. As soon 
as possible, he should be encouraged and allowed 
to dress himself, his clothes being made with this 
in view, although there must always be some but- 
tons which three and four-year-old fingers cannot 
reach, and should assume the responsibility of put- 
ting away his own clothes and knowing where they 
are. People who have struggled with older chil- 
dren on these subjects will be surprised to note how 
naturally and easily a little child will assume these 
helpful and desirable habits. The important point 
is to " catch him young," before he has learned 
other bad habits of irresponsibility and sloth. Of 
course, there should be, as far as humanly possible, 
the greatest amount of regularity and routine in 
the little life. He should eat his meals at regular 
hours, feeding himself . and sitting at a low table ; 
he should take his naps regularly; he should always 
"pick up" his own room before leaving it in the 
morning, and do what small household tasks are 
his every day, without fail. 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 83 

And this simple, industrious, tranquil life, with 
no excitements of joining in adult "pleasures"; full 
of profitable "play" which is educational, and per- 
meated with a sense of responsibility on the child's 
part for the conduct of his own life, is the Mon- 
tessori life for a child between two and seven. It 
is not enough that he construct the Tower, and the 
Long Stair, and learn his sandpaper letters perfectly; 
he must learn to be a self-dependent, self-respecting, 
self -trusting citizen of his little world. 

EXERCISE TWENTY-THREE 
FIRST STEPS IN ARITHMETIC 

Counting Boxes and Sandpaper Numbers. — We 
have now to consider the question of arithmetic and 
the Montessori application of the subject to the child 
of the average American home. There is a preju- 
dice in the minds of most Americans about pre- 
senting mathematics to children under six, no matter 
how simply it may be arranged. My own experi- 
ence, backed up by that of the Casa dei Bambini, 
is that children over three take a lively interest in 
the sequence of numbers, and in some of the simpler 
processes of arithmetic, if those processes can be 
presented to them in a sufficiently concrete form. 
The Montessori apparatus for this purpose is very 
simple, and can be supplemented by several other 
devices, easily obtained in any home. 



84 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

These counting boxes comprise two small boxes, 
with five compartments or divisions in each. Accom- 
panying the two boxes are fifty smooth, round sticks, 
exactly alike, and a set of numbers from to 9, 
cut out of sandpaper and pasted on white cards. 
The counting sticks give the child a concrete basis 
for the abstract names of the numbers, and he learns 
to associate the symbol with the concrete object. 
At first the child does not play with the sandpaper 
numbers. These are removed from the boxes and 
he but wrestles with the problem of oral counting, 
using the sticks. One good way to begin is by 
arranging one of the boxes as the illustration shows, 
the one to the left of the page, the numbers having 
been removed; that is, there are no sticks in the 
first compartment, one in the next, two in the next, 
three in the next, and four in the last. This exer- 
cise is, of course, for a very little child, who has 
no idea of the definite sequence of numbers, or of 
how to determine how many objects he holds in his 
hand. The other box is then emptied of all its 
contents and given the child, with an ample supply 
of the counting sticks, and he is invited to make 
his box exactly like the one his mother has arranged. 
Most children can, even at a very early age, quickly 
put one stick in the second compartment and two in 
the next. Here frequently, at the very beginning, 
there ensues some mental confusion, and much eager 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 85 

gazing at the three sticks in the box arranged by t 
the mother. Anxious attempts are made by the 
child to lay an equal number in the next compart- 
ment of his own box. The mother should not help 
in this process. It does the child no good if she 
interferes and does it herself, or corrects his mis- 
take. If he has arrived at the age when his brain 
can master this simple arithmetical idea, he will 
ultimately solve the problem and place the proper 
number of sticks in each compartment. If he has 
not yet arrived at the right age or state of develop- 
ment, he will not really take in the significance of 
anything his mother may do, seeking to aid him. 
If he repeatedly performs this exercise incorrectly, 
or shows signs of mental fatigue, such as nervous 
irritation at his inability to solve the problem, the 
boxes should be removed, and the attempt postponed 
until a later day. 

Astonishing Mental Growth. — The mental 
growth of children at this age is so astonishingly 
rapid that sometimes a child will be able easily 
to solve a problem only a week after he has found 
it perfectly impenetrable. It is quite possible that 
during the week some subconscious forces of the 
mind have been, quite unknown to the child, work- 
ing on the problem presented. In no other way 
can an explanation be found of the surprising man- 
ner in which, after failing on a Montessori exercise, 



86 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

a child will take it up, several days later, without 
having touched it in the meantime, and know how 
to set to work purposefully and successfully. It 
is far better to trust this principle of growth than 
to attempt to urge the child to put forth powers 
which he does not as yet possess. 

Begins to Count. — As soon as he can complete 
the series up to four, he can go on, one at a time, 
to complete the series up to nine, as shown in the 
illustration; and then, if he is the normal child, 
with a wide-awake, intelligent, curious mind, he will 
be observed "counting" everything in sight. He 
is delighted with his new acquisition, and employs 
it on all the material at hand. A child of three 
and-a-half, who had just mastered the sequence in 
the counting boxes, ran about the house, counting 
the windows, the drawers in the bureaus, the chairs 
in the rooms, the legs of the tables, and deriving 
the most mysterious satisfaction, which lasted for 
many days, from this new control of the world 
about him. He gets, of course, from having his 
interest and own initiative once aroused, vastly more 
drill in repetition exercise than the most ingenious 
teacher could give him. 



Children putting away Didactic material, National Kindergarten College, Chicago 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 87 

EXERCISE TWENTY-FOUR 
THE SANDPAPER NUMBERS ARE ADDED 

Now is the time to bring out the sandpaper 
numbers. He is taught these just as he learned his 
letters, one at a time, and following the three regu- 
lar steps. First, the mother guides the little fore- 
finger over the rough sandpaper as the number 
would be written, at the same time pronouncing 
the name of the number, slowly and distinctly, and 
adding no explanations. She should here, as always, 
refrain from the wordy comments to which we are 
all too much given, and should not say, "See, this 
is 8. It looks like 'S,' only a little different; you 
see, S is open here, and here," etc. She should, in- 
stead, hold up the card, say clearly, "8," and show 
the little fingers how to trace the outline. Then she 
should lay several down on the table, and ask the 
child, ' l Give me ' 7, " ' or, " Give me 1 2, ' please. ' ' When 
he has mastered this, she should then hold up a card 
and ask the child to tell her what it is. When he 
can do this accurately, he has mastered his numbers. 
According to his age and capacity, this may take him 
two days, or two weeks. The next thing to do is to 
teach him to connect them with the right number of 
objects. And here the counting boxes come again 
into play. He should arrange the series, and place 
the right number in each compartment. The mother 



88 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

will be surprised to see that even after mastering 
the names and looks of the number and the sequence 
in the number boxes, the average child finds it 
quite an intellectual effort to put the two things 
together in his mind. He will need plenty of time 
and quiet to struggle with the new problem, and 
if it is too hard on the first trial, the number boxes 
should be taken away without comment, and some 
other "game" suggested. 

EXERCISE TWENTY-FIVE 

An Akithmetical Game with the Long Stair. 
— Another arithmetical game is played with the 
Long Stair. The stair is arranged in sequence and 
a cardboard number corresponding with the num- 
ber of rods in the section is leaned up against the 
section; "1" against the section with only one rod, 
the "2" against the next one, and so forth. I 
remember seeing a child of four go slowly through 
this exercise in a Casa dei Bambini, taking frequent 
rests, but returning with a steady, purposeful indus- 
try to his undertaking, until he had the whole 
sequence up to ten correctly numbered. And then 
he lay down and took a brief nap, being apparently 
quite exhausted by the mental effort involved in 
what seems the simplest possible of rational con- 
nections between ideas. 

A Game with Money. — About this time, or per- 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 89 

haps a little earlier, it is well to begin to teach a 
child the significance of money. He is always inter- 
ested in this, seeing it of so much importance in 
the • life of adults, and will play with it endlessly, 
and study the possible combinations to be made 
with it, if they are suggested to his mind. It is 
better, if possible, to have new money. If this 
cannot be managed, the coins should be thoroughly 
cleansed before the child plays with them. The 
mother should teach him the names of the different 
coins with the same three steps used in teaching 
him the names of the letters and numbers; that 
is, first tell him the names, slowly, one or two at 
a time; then ask him for a given coin; then point 
to a given coin and ask what it is called. At first 
the little child likes, as a rule, simply to sort out 
the money into the right piles, all the pennies 
together, all the nickels, all the quarters, etc. He 
should be allowed to play in this way until he is 
thoroughly acquainted with their names and sizes. 
Then, if he is old enough to count with certainty 
up to ten, the relative value of the different coins 
can be explained to him; five pennies equal one 
nickel, etc. This is somewhat complicated, and care 
should be taken to go very slowly, only a little on 
any one day. When he has grasped something of 
this relation, the mother can hold up a nickel and 
ask, "How many pennies do I want for this?" 



90 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

Or she and the child can play a simple version of 
the " going shopping" game, always so fascinating 
to older children. "I want six pennies for this 
spool of thread." "How much do you want for 
that doll?" etc. 

Arithmetical Game with Counting Sticks. — 
An interesting "game" which can be played with 
numbers, if there are two or more children together, 
is the following: A certain number of the count- 
ing sticks, or any other objects such as clothespins, 
stones, spoons, coins, etc., are placed on a table. 
The mother then holds a bag containing the num- 
bers up to ten. Each child draws a number at 
random, and, without showing it to his companions, 
goes back to his seat. When all have drawn their 
numbers, each child goes up to the table and selects 
from it the number of objects corresponding with 
the number hidden in his hand. He carries these 
back to his place and arranges them in order, and 
waits for the mother or teacher to come and verify 
the correctness of his counting. 

Teaches Self-Control. — This simple game, 
which would not amuse older children for a moment, 
is of inexhaustible interest for little ones, and has 
a various and complex influence on them. There 
is a considerable amount of self-control involved in 
their taking only the number of objects indicated 
by the number they have drawn, since every child's 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 91 

instinctive action is to grab all lie can hold and 
carry off his prize in triumph. The mother should 
explain that this spoils the fun of the game, which 
consists in fitting the mysterious written sign to 
the number of objects chosen. Another conception 
which is firmly settled in the child's mind by this 
and other similar " games" is the abstract idea of 
"zero," since the child who draws zero selects no 
objects at all. 

Game with Sandpaper Numbers. — Another 
arithmetical game which can be played with one 
or many children is played with the sandpaper 
numbers, or any large numbers, such as could be 
cut out of old calendars. The mother or teacher 
holds up a number and asks, "Come and give me 
this many kisses," or, "Bring me this number of 
pennies." This sort of "fun" familiarizes the mind 
of the little child with the connection between the 
written sign and the number, and especially fixes 
in his brain (in the game just described) the real 
concept of the sign "zero," which is often a stum- 
blingblock to older children. 

Game with Movable Alphabet. — A similar game 
can be played with the movable alphabet, with older 
children, who have learned the beginnings of read- 
ing. The mother constructs a word, say for instance, 
"pin," and, pointing it out to the child, says, "Bring 
me this, please." The child who is first to read 



92 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

the word and select the article, wins. When sev- 
eral children of the same age and acquirements play 
this together, the fun, and intensity of interest, and 
consequent sharpening of wits, form an invaluable 
exercise. 

Hide-and-Seek with Movable Alphabet.— A 
game of hide-and-seek can also be played with chil- 
dren who have begun to recognize words formed 
with the movable alphabet. The mother constructs, 
in different parts of the room, different simple 
words which the child has already seen, such as 
"pig," "hen," "dog," etc. The child is out of 
the room while this is being done, and is called 
back to be told, "I hear something grunting." He 
then rushes about, peering under the chairs and 
on the table and window-sills, rejecting all other 
words he finds, until he comes triumphantly to "pig." 
It is better, with little children, to use the movable 
alphabet for these words, rather than writing them 
on paper, even in the plainest script, for two reasons : 
first, the child is more used to the movable alpha- 
bet; and second, the letters are so very large that 
there can be not the slightest opportunity for eye- 
strain. 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 93 

EXERCISE TWENTY-SIX 
THE MONTESSORI SILENCE TRAINING 

There is one phase of the Montessori training 
which has not yet been touched upon, and it is 
rather hard to manage in the ordinary small Amer- 
ican family. That is the exercise known as "Making 
the Silence. " I quote the description of this impress- 
ive exercise, given in A Montessori Mother, so that 
the American mother may have some idea of what 
she is to try to imitate, in her differing circumstances : 

"One may be moving about between the groups 
of busy children, or sitting watching their lively 
animation, or listening to the cheerful hum of their 
voices, when one feels a curious change in the atmos- 
phere, like the hush which falls on a forest when 
the sun suddenly goes behind a cloud. If it is 
the first time that one has seen this "lesson," the 
effect is startling. A quick glance around shows 
that the children have stopped playing as well as 
talking, and are sitting motionless at their tables, 
their eyes on the blackboard, where, in large let- 
ters, is written, 'Silenzio' (Silence). Even the little 
ones, who cannot read, follow the example of the 
older ones and not only sit motionless but look 
fixedly at the magic word. The Directress is visible 
now, standing by the blackboard, in an attitude and 
with an expression of tranquillity which is as calm- 



94 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

ing to see as the meditative impassivity of a Bud- 
dhist priest. The silence becomes more and more 
intense. To untrained ears it seems absolute, but 
an occasional gesture or warning smile from the 
Directress shows that a little hand has moved, almost 
but not quite inaudibly, or a chair has creaked. 

"And then a real veil of twilight falls to inten- 
sify the effect. The Directress goes quietly about 
from window to window, closing the shutters. In 
the ensuing twilight, the children bow their heads 
on their clasped hands, in the attitude of prayer. 
The Directress steps through the door into the next 
room, and a slow voice, faint and clear, comes float- 
ing back, calling a child's name: 'El — e — na!' 

"A child lifts her head, opens her eyes, rises as 
silently as a little spirit, and, with a glowing face 
of exaltation, tiptoes out of the room, flinging her- 
self joyously into the waiting arms. 

"The summons comes again, 'Vit — to — rio!' 

"A little boy lifts his head from his desk, show- 
ing a face of sweet, sober content at being called, 
and goes silently across the big room, taking his 
place by the side of the Directress. And so it goes, 
until perhaps fifteen children are clustered happily 
about the teacher. Then, as informally and natu- 
rally as it began, the 'game' is over. The teacher 
comes back into the room with her usual quiet, firm 
step; light pours in at the windows; the mystic 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 95 

word is erased from the blackboard. The children 
smile at each other, and begin to play again, per- 
haps a little more quietly than before, perhaps more 
gently, certainly with the shining eyes of devout 
believers who have blessedly lost themselves in an 
instant of rapt and self-forgetting devotion." 

Now, this exercise is, of course, practically impos- 
sible to imitate exactly in a small family, but some 
adaptation of it should be made, for its benefits 
are too important to be missed. It was begun as 
an exercise for the sense of hearing, since the chil- 
dren are called in the lightest possible whisper; 
but it was soon seen to be of great moral impor- 
tance. Such a period of perfect silence and immo- 
bility, if he takes it of his own accord, has the most 
miraculously calming effect on the average nervous, 
high-strung American child. 

It can be begun by a laughing competition between 
mother and child, or between two or more chil- 
dren, to see who can "keep the stillest." The one 
who moves first has "lost." The mother can set 
the example by standing in the middle of the room, 
so intensely quiet that it is "as if she were not 
there." Or she can sit beside the child on a bed 
or sofa, and try with him to be so silent that any 
one entering the room could not guess their pres- 
ence. A slightly darkened room adds to the quiet- 
ing effect of this exercise. Or she can leave him in 



96 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

a room by himself until lie is perfectly silent, and 
then call him in a faint whisper, after which he 
tries to leave the room so silently that his footsteps 
cannot be heard. 

EXERCISE TWENTY-SEVEN 

GAMES THAT TEACH SELF-CONTROL AND COMMAND OF 
THE FIVE SENSES 

An exercise in pure immobility can be given by 
showing the child his shadow, cast by a bright light 
back of him, and asking him if he can keep so quiet 
that his shadow will not quiver. The shadow is 
so much enlarged that the slightest motion is readily 
perceived by the child. 

These exercises are taken because, to have per- 
fect control of the muscles of the body, it is as 
essential to be able to do nothing with them as to 
be able to use them accurately. The ordinary chil- 
dren's game, like " blind-man's buff," where the 
players must be silent or they will be caught, are 
fine practice for attaining this capacity to sit or 
stand perfectly quiet, and children should be encour- 
aged to play them. In fact, many of our homeliest 
and most familiar children's games are based on 
the pleasure children naturally take in learning self- 
control, and command of their five senses. "Hide- 
and-seek" in all its forms is fine exercise for little 
children, who often, at the beginning, find it impos- 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 97 

sible to control themselves long enough to remain 
hidden. And "hunt-the-thimble" is splendid prac- 
tice for concentrating the naturally wandering atten- 
tion of little ones. They should be taught these 
games carefully, and some supervision given at first, 
to make sure they have caught the idea, and then 
every inducement given to continue playing them. 

EXERCISE TWENTY-EIGHT 

TURNING THE CHILD'S EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES INTO 
MONTESSORI EXERCISES 

Before leaving the discussion of the formal Mon- 
tessori apparatus and going on to the discussion 
of the Montessori idea of obedience and discipline, 
I wish to make one more general remark, to the 
effect that the mother will do well to remember 
that practically anything which the child takes into 
its head to do (provided it is not injurious to him- 
self or others) can be made into a more or less 
efficient Montessori exercise, which will teach him 
command of material objects and muscular self- 
control. Eestrain as much as possible the natural 
instinct to cry to an inquiring, investigating three 
or four-year-old child, " Don't touch that!" "Come 
away from there!" etc. Of course, if he is trying 
to reach a basin of boiling water, such peremptory 
commands to inaction are necessary. But in most 



98 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

cases a moment's reflection shows that the child's 
action is not " naughty" in itself, and if the action 
is directed in the right way, will harm neither him- 
self nor the object touched. If he suddenly per- 
ceives the curious way in which drawers in a bureau 
open and shut, he should not be called away and 
forbidden to touch them. Our first thought is that 
he is trying to get at the contents of the drawer 
to injure them; whereas, in nine cases out of ten, 
his only interest is in mastering the mechanism of 
the sliding drawer. Now is the time, while his 
interest is aroused, to show him how to open and 
shut drawers easily, without drawing them out too 
far, without pinching his fingers when he shuts them 
up. This practical exercise in one of the processes 
of everyday life is quite as good as any " lesson" 
taught by the Montessori apparatus in a Casa dei 
Bambini. The child can do no possible harm by 
opening and shutting the drawers, and he is learn- 
ing a very great deal about the way to manage his 
muscles and to concentrate his attention on the opera- 
tion he undertakes. 

Analyze the Child's Motives. — There are, in 
the course of every day in an ordinary home, innu- 
merable such exercises, which are forbidden the 
average child, simply because his parents do not 
take the trouble to analyze his needs. Of course, 
it will not do to allow a child to crumple up freshly 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 99 

ironed table linen, but we are mistaken in thinking 
that a little child had any ''naughty" motive in 
doing this. His desire was to handle cloth, as he 
sees his mother handling it; to try to fold it up, 
and spread it out, and lay it evenly over a table or 
chair. An old dishcloth will do as well for him 
as one's best dinner napkin. In short, one should 
cultivate the habit of asking one's self definitely, 
before forbidding an action to a child, "Is it really 
bad for him to do it?" "Will he really injure any- 
thing by doing it?" and finally (this the most impor- 
tant), "Is there not some substitute activity which 
I could provide for him, without the objectionable 
features of what he is doing?" 

How to Avoid Giving Negative Commands. — 
Every mother should have a fixed rule for herself, 
to give as few as possible merely negative com- 
mands. She should try almost never to say merely, 
"Don't do that," but to have the quick inventive- 
ness to say, "You may now do this," or "You may 
not do that; but here is something very much like 
it which you may do." 

EXERCISE TWENTY-NINE 

LEABNING TO USE BOOKS AND TO HANDLE DELICATE AND 
FEAGILE OBJECTS 

Instead of forbidding a little child to touch books, 
on the contrary, he should be given certain strongly 



100 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

bound, plain volumes, and allowed to handle them, 
after the method of treating them carefully has 
been explained to him — always in the Montessori 
manner of brief explanations and few words. Even 
very little children often show the greatest pleasure 
in " playing" with a book, turning over the leaves 
and pretending to read aloud, and their little fingers 
learn deft care in the use of printed pages, which 
makes it, as they grow older, no more natural for 
them than for an adult to tear or mutilate a volume. 
They should be allowed an occasional exercise, 
granted as a great privilege, of handling and look- 
ing at some delicate objects, like embroidered table 
linen, or the contents of a jewel box. They will 
soon learn to wash their hands with fervor and 
to touch such fine and breakable objects with the 
most breathless care. How else can they learn prop- 
erly to treat fragile objects, except by handling 
them once in a while? Of course, the concentration 
necessary for them to be careful and cautious in 
lifting and looking at such things is too great for 
them to continue at it very long. After a time, the 
box of doilies, or the fancy pins and rings, or the 
handsomely illustrated book, should be taken away 
and a less breakable or spoilable plaything given. 
But it is a great mistake to treat a child, even as 
young as three, as though he were maliciously 
destructive, and to have him, for instance, always 



USE OF THE APPARATUS 101 

eat from a tin plate and drink from a tin or silver 
cup. He will acquire inevitably the mental habit 
of carelessness in handling such objects. His tin 
cup will not break if he drops it — why should he 
take any pains not to drop it? The four-year-old 
children in Rome who bring in from the school 
kitchen big tureens of hot soup, and wash the dishes 
after a meal, successfully, should be remembered. 
The little child should be carefully trained, by the 
formal Montessori apparatus, to a firm, light, unhur- 
ried grasp on what he takes hold of, and then should 
be trusted with this new power. 

Trust the Child. — The more he is trusted, the 
more astonished will be his mother at the extent 
to which it is quite safe to trust him. If he has 
not been forbidden always to touch things, there 
will be no temptation to furtive and disobedient 
handlings of objects, always with the fear of being 
discovered, which makes for nervousness and mus- 
cular uncertainty. The mother will find that a child 
who is allowed to learn by practicing the various 
household processes shows no desire to be the merely 
destructive force which so many older, untrained 
children helplessly show themselves. 

If the child is provided with a goodly supply of 
objects to handle, there is little temptation to touch 
the few things which are rightly forbidden him. 
I know a nervous, active little girl of four, who 



102 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

is allowed to play freely with all the objects on 
her father's writing desk, with the single exception 
of the fountain pen and the ink, which are the 
only things she might injure. She has, at intervals, 
amused herself for six months with the other objects 
— -the blotter pad and the calendar, the letter weight, 
the book rack, the letter basket — and never once, 
in all that time, has ever suggested touching the 
ink well, nor has ever forgotten to replace carefully 
the objects handled. 

Treat the Child as Human Being. — In general, 
it should be remembered that the very little child, 
who has had no opportunity to acquire bad mental 
habits, is a member of the family and a human 
being, as much as any of the adults, and should be 
treated as such. He has no natural, inborn desire 
to destroy objects, if he can learn how to handle 
them without injuring them. He learns from touch- 
ing, weighing, handling objects of different sizes 
and shapes, and he should be allowed to do this, 
unless there is a positive, serious reason against it. 




Torresdale House, Torresdale, Phil. First building erected in America for 
Montessori work, at a cost of $30,000.00 











" I 'S : " : - 


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The Junior Montessori Room, Torresdale House 



SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES ON NATURE 
STUDY 

Nature Study is one of the subjects which (owing 
to conditions in Rome) Dr. Montessori has not yet 
fully elaborated, so that whatever is done now in 
that direction by American mothers, using her prin- 
ciples with young children, must be largely the 
result of their own initiative. It will be well to 
read any good manual of Nature Study used in 
kindergarten and the lower grades; and the State 
Agricultural Experiment Stations of various states, 
notably that of Cornell University, have issued some 
suggestive pamphlets on the subject, which may be 
secured by sending a request. 

However, any mother lucky enough to be bring- 
ing up her children in a small town or the country, 
with a few trees and a bit of ground available, needs 
only a jog to her inventiveness. The changing 
seasons will provide an illustrated history which 
needs only a running commentary to make it intel- 
ligible to the child. 

Throughout this work, the mother should bear 
in mind the strong conviction of Dr. Montessori on 

103 



104 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

this subject. The Dottoressa holds that the usual 
pretty, fanciful, fairy-tale wording of information 
about facts of Nature is harmful and misleading 
to young children, who are quite literal-minded about 
accepting fairies and the like. For this reason, all 
kindergarten literature and nature study should be 
taken with a grain of salt on the mother's part. 
A maple leaf is not a fairy hand; a morning-glory 
is not a tent for the fairies; the buds of the trees 
in winter time are not " cradles" for leaves, but 
are the germs of leaves, protected from the cold, 
etc. The average child has naturally only too inac- 
curate a gaze at objects. He needs no encourage- 
ment to imagine them something different from 
what they are. If he is to have fairies, let him 
have them frankly imaginary, and not confuse with 
them the actual facts of the universe. The facts 
of nature, the growth of plants, seeds, etc., are quite 
wonderful and fantastic enough to interest any 
child without dressing them up in a wildly imagi- 
nary lingo which throws his simple mind entirely 
off the right track. I knew a child who had been 
told that the leaf -buds in winter were the cradles 
for the leaves, and who lost his entire faith in 
his teachers when a winter bud was cut open before 
him, and no leaf rolled out. It is hard to conceive 
the entire, literal faith of little children in what 
they are told. The greatest care should be taken 



SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES ON NATURE STUDY 105 

not to abuse this by telling them things that are 
not so. Things that are so are more than inter- 
esting enough. 

The growth of tree buds can be studied in the 
house by taking a small branch from a tree in Janu- 
ary or February and letting it open in the warm 
air of an indoor room. This process takes place 
so slowly that every child whose attention is called 
to it, day after day, will have it firmly impressed 
upon his mind. The growth of seeds can be shown 
by planting close to the edge of an old jelly glass 
filled with earth. The growth of the young roots 
can be watched through the glass. A supply of 
small pots to grow different sorts of plants is also 
a good bit of " apparatus." The simplest varieties 
are the best — corn, peas, grass, etc. If this is done 
in winter, when there is not the bewildering variety 
of vegetation outdoors, the child — even the very 
young child — will soon come to recognize different 
plants very readily, and to have some notion of 
their requirements. 

In summer time, a great deal is absorbed by 
simply living close to Mother Earth, especially if 
the parents are interested in processes of Nature. 
The child should have, if possible, a little garden 
of his own, which he is allowed to care for "all 
himself," and his attention should be called to the 
actions of ants, birds, insects, chickens, etc. He 



106 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

should then be allowed to observe these things, inde- 
pendent of supervision and suggestion, using them 
as he uses his Montessori apparatus, as a means 
to self-education. It is a good plan, if possible, to 
have drawn on large sheets of paper simple outlines 
of common birds and animals, which the child fills 
in with colors. Do not correct him if he makes a 
pig green, or the sky pink. The fact that he is 
thinking at all about the color of pigs and the sky 
will make him, some day, of his own accord, notice 
the real color, and this discovery will be of infi- 
nitely more value to him if he has made it quite 
himself. The difference between weeds (plants that 
are not useful) and flowers and vegetables should 
be explained to him, and his aid secured for the 
campaign against weeds. He is certain to feel a 
great self-importance at being allowed to help in 
the care of the garden. 



VI 

MONTESSORI GENERAL IDEAS ABOUT 
DISCIPLINE AND OBEDIENCE 

The philosophy underlying all of the Montessori 
Method for educating young children was briefly 
described before the apparatus was taken up. No 
one should undertake to use the apparatus without 
a firm grasp on that master principle, that the aim 
of education in the case of the little child (as for 
all of us) is not the acquisition of knowledge, but 
the desire and capacity to acquire knowledge; and 
further, that since the child must himself feel and 
acquire this desire and this capacity, it is essential 
to leave him as much opportunity as possible for 
the exercise of his own initiative and his own inven- 
tion. For the three-year-old, as for the ten-year- 
old, it will do the child no good for the mother to 
learn his lessons for him. The joy of a little child's 
heart is in overcoming obstacles, and if his mother 
takes all the obstacles away from him, she takes 
the flavor out of his life. The Montessori appa- 
ratus — the whole Montessori idea — is meant to fur- 
nish appropriate obstacles for children of three and 
four, and five and six years old. 

107 



108 THE MONTESSOEI MANUAL 

Since this general philosophy was stated at the 
beginning of this Manual, there is no necessity for 
repeating that statement here. But there is one 
phase of the Montessori idea which needs more 
explicit expression than it is apt to get in general 
descriptions of the system. That is the question 
of discipline and obedience. Those two subjects are 
so vital and so tragically misunderstood by most of 
us, that it may be well to go a little more deeply 
into the discussion of them. 

Intelligent Obedience. — The first thing to do, 
in the consideration of the obedience of children, is 
to differentiate clearly in our minds between the 
obedience that is desirable for an animal, and that 
which is desirable for the young of the human race. 
"We are apt to be confused here, and to have a mis- 
understood notion that children should obey, unques- 
tioningly, passively, with no volition of their own, 
as does a well-broken horse. But such unquestion- 
ing obedience, as a moment's reflection will show, is 
a very dangerous mental habit for a child to acquire, 
as well as a very difficult one to force him to acquire. 
The horse may obey unquestioningly some human 
being; he will always have some human being set 
in authority over him. But in a very few years, 
as human life goes, the child will be grown; will 
no longer be subject to the authority of parents, and 
must in turn be able to secure the obedience of 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 109 

others. It is essential, therefore, that he shall begin 
to be a human being — that is, to obey intelligently 
—as soon as possible. What do we mean by the 
phrase "obey intelligently?" We mean he must 
obey, not because some one has told him to and will 
punish him if he does not, for that is the obedience 
exacted of the animal; but he will obey because 
the command is a reasonable one, which his reason 
tells him it is necessary to obey. We adults do 
not refrain from robbing and murdering and burn- 
ing down other people's houses simply because we 
are afraid a policeman will arrest us if we do. We 
refrain from doing such things because we are law- 
abiding American citizens. Let us help to make 
our children law-abiding American citizens, and not 
the victims of Russian irrational tyranny. 

The Basis of Pakents' Authoeity. — Our chil- 
dren should understand that their duty is not to 
obey our personal wishes, because we happen to be 
their parents, but to obey eternal laws which we 
represent and expound and enforce. To take an 
instance, familiar to all of us, which comes into our 
everyday experience: Children should not, any more 
than they can help, be "messy" over their meals; 
should not spill food on the tablecloth, or on their 
clothes, or be unpleasant in their way of eating. 
Why should they not do these things? Simply 
because their parents forbid it? Not at all. Because 



110 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

it is their duty, as members of a community, to 
make the common life as agreeable, as easy, and 
as economically conducted as possible. Their par- 
ents' duty is not at all to cry, "You do it because 
I say so!" but to explain reasonably the underlying 
grounds of conduct, to allow a reasonable time for 
an understanding of the principle to reach the child's 
brain, and then to be unflinching in their police 
duty of enforcing obedience — obedience not to them- 
selves, but to a law, which they must obey as well 
as the children. If there is no such general broad 
basis for a command given to a child, it is an unjust 
command, and should not be issued. No child should 
he forced to obey a whim of the parent, but only, 
some modification of one of the general laws which 
he will need to obey when he is grown up. 

The Management of the Very Young Child 
of Unreasoning Age. — Now, of course, it is impos- 
sible for very little children to make this distinction. 
Babies under eighteen months must be forced to obey, 
if the occasion rises, as other little unreasonable ani- 
mals are forced, by sheer physical compulsion. But, 
as this is a very bad method of obtaining obedience, 
the occasions for requiring obedience should be sedu- 
lously avoided, as much as is reasonably possible, 
during this animal-like period of the child's growth. 
No one thinks of requiring obedience of a week-old 
baby, and yet he is in many respects just as capable 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 111 

of being obedient as many a year-old child. If yon 
need to move a week-old baby from one spot to 
another, you do not stand off and command him 
to move — you pick him up and carry him; and the 
same treatment is often best for the irrational year- 
old baby. 

Parents Unconsciously Foece Children to Dis- 
obedience. — Parents, in their great anxiety to avoid 
that utter abomination, a disobedient child, often 
are entirely unreasonable in their demands on very 
young children. You would not dream of asking 
your two-year-old son to do a sum in arithmetic; 
and yet you tell him peremptorily to do that far 
harder thing, "Do keep still for a minute!" He 
cannot keep still for a minute at that age, and to 
issue that command to him means simply that you 
yourself are initiating him into the meaning of dis- 
obedience. In general, then, with very young chil- 
dren, the method of procedure should be: 

First. — To so arrange his life that there shall 
be few needs to issue commands. A child who is 
kept quietly at home, playing with objects designed 
for his use, who is not "shown off" to adults, who 
is not forced into such cruel situations as enforced 
participation in adult life, like traveling on the 
cars, going to church, or to shops, or on the street 
cars, or asked to entertain a company of idle elders, 
will rarely be insubordinate, or think of such a thing 



112 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

as disobeying, for the simple reason that the things 
asked of him are within his capacity to do. On the 
rare occasion when such a crisis arises, it is best 
frankly to treat the little creature like a speechless 
animal, which he is, and enforce obedience to some- 
thing necessary. But this should, in any ordinary 
normal child's life, happen not more than once or 
twice up to his second year. 

Second. — As soon as he begins to be able to 
understand simple statements, the reason for various 
commands given him should be explained to him. 
One result of this rule is apt to be that fewer com- 
mands are given, as they are often seen to rest upon 
utterly unreasonable grounds. The child should be 
trained, first, to obey promptly, and then to expect 
an explanation of the action. In most cases this 
careful clarifying in his mind of the grounds for 
action, results in a most satisfactory regime of reason- 
ableness. Suppose, for instance, that a child is seen 
climbing upon a chair before the sideboard in the 
dining-room. His mother should not call out to 
him simply, "Come away from there!" but should 
explain to him that it is dangerous for him to handle 
the glasses, standing in rows on the top, because 
he would be apt to break them. If the child then 
asks to be allowed to play with the spoons in the 
drawer, there is no reasonable grounds for refusing 
that request. He has made a concession, and has 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 113 

learned self-control and obedience in refraining 
from touching the glasses, and his mother has, if 
she is alert-minded enough to learn a lesson, taken 
note that her command, "Come away from there!" 
was not exactly fitted to the case. She should have 
analyzed the situation more acutely, and see that 
she need not forbid a harmless amusement to the 
child because it happened to be in proximity to a 
potentially harmful one. Such frank explanation 
and mutual concession are most valuable and vital 
elements in the harmonious relations of parent and 
child, and do more than anything else to prevent 
that bitter rebellion against authority which so often 
saddens the adolescence of children with strong wills 
and a keen sense of justice. 

Third. — The mother should make the most care- 
ful distinction between the conscious, willful action 
of a child, and the sort of wild irritability which 
results in "naughty" actions, but which is the result 
itself of nervous fatigue, due to injudicious treat- 
ment. In the Casa dei Bambini, on the very rare 
occasions when a child is "naughty," he is treated 
as a "sick" child; is put off in a quiet corner of 
the room, allowed all the toys he wishes to play 
with, is soothed and petted, allowed everything but 
(this is the important point) to play with the other 
children. In a short time this reduces the most 
unruly child to submission. But in an ordinary 



114 THE MONTESSORT MANUAL 

home, with only two or three children, the " naughty" 
child is not privileged, like the Italian child in the 
Montessori school, to see constantly before him the 
precious example of the orderly, peaceable, indus- 
trious behavior of thirty other children. The prin- 
ciple, however, holds. Nine times out of ten, the 
" naughty" child is, in all sober reality, a sick child, 
or at least a very tired child. It is hard for adults 
to realize what a nervous strain it is, for instance, 
for a child of three to see strange faces for a few 
hours. I have known several cases of children, even 
as old as four and five, who were reduced to what 
was practically nervous hysteria by a trip down 
town with an adult, going in the street cars, and 
being taken to several shops. The mothers of these 
children were in despair over their naughty and 
turbulent dispositions, as no amount of disciplining 
did the least good. Of course, it did not. The 
child's sensitive nerves were, for the time being, in 
such a tense, unnatural state of strain that the 
child, for all practical purposes, was insane. When 
another regime was adopted, of unvarying quiet for 
the child, of a tranquil, peaceful routine, never 
changed, with few persons in it, and plenty of sleep, 
regularly taken, the " naughty" dispositions van- 
ished like magic, and sweet-tempered, loving, tract- 
able little children proved that the trouble had been 
purely physical and nervous. 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 115 

Now, this means in many ways quite a sacrifice 
on the part of the mother. In most cases, if she 
cannot take the children with her, on shopping and 
pleasure excursions, she is obliged to stay at home 
with them. Sometimes, however, even where there 
is no grandmother or aunt who can be left for a 
few hours with the little ones, an arrangement can 
be made with a neighbor who also has little chil- 
dren, to " trade" with her, to take care of her chil- 
dren as well as your own for one afternoon, on 
condition that she do the same for you. If neither 
of these are possible, then the mother, if she is 
conscientious and really wishes to do the best pos- 
sible for her children, must simply resign herself 
to a very quiet life during their early childhood. 
She can reflect that she may expect, under ordinary 
circumstances, to live to be seventy or more years 
old, and that to give up five or even eight years of 
all that time to the care of her little children is 
not a large proportion of her life. And she will 
be more than repaid, in the ease of " managing" 
her children, if she can secure for them a perfectly 
regular, even, tranquil life, with absolutely no adult 
excitements. She should keep before her mind the 
perfectly happy, perfectly good children in the 
Roman Casa dei Bambini, who never, never, have 
a change, who know no other life than the round 
of work and fun which is specially adapted to them. 



116 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

If such a regime is rigorously adhered to, in the 
ordinary family, ninety-nine per cent of the diffi- 
culty of disciplining little children would be entirely 
obviated. They learn to obey unconsciously, because 
they are never asked to exercise their will-power 
and self-control, when their sensitive little nerves 
are at the breaking point from fatigue and excite- 
ment. It is, of course, impossible absolutely to 
attain this ideal in the ordinary American family. 
There are sure to be cousins, and aunts, and uncles, 
and even grandmothers and grandfathers, little in 
sympathy with this rational and merciful method 
of treating little children — people who consider that 
part of a child's duty is to amuse and entertain its 
elders — people who say, "Oh, what's the good of 
having a child, if you can't have fun with it*?" 
They are the sort of people who, fifteen years ago, 
used to insist upon tossing up and down a new- 
born baby, shaking bright-colored objects before its 
eyes, and generally driving it to nervous prostra- 
tion; whereupon they left the house, and the par- 
ents were obliged to nurse the child over the almost 
inevitable fit of indigestion and "nerves" which fol- 
lowed. Such people now are the ones who like to 
make a three-year-old child "show off" and say 
"funny things." They still leave the parents to 
bear the brunt of the ensuing nervous attack. 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 117 

Should Not Discipline or Try to Reason with 
A Child When Nervously Excited. — The only thing 
the mother can do in such a case is to remember 
that the child is not himself when nervously excited. 
There is no use trying to "reason" with him, or to 
discipline him, or arouse his better nature. For 
the moment he has no better nature! He is nothing 
but jangled nerves. A tired or excited young child 
should never be asked to exercise self-control; there 
should be no occasion for it. The only thing to do 
with him is to quiet him as soon as possible by 
purely physical means. If he is hungry, get him 
something, very easily digested, to eat; slip off his 
clothing, give him a warm bath, if possible, and 
lay him down in a comfortable bed, in a room not 
too light, with plenty of fresh air. When he has 
slept and rested, he will have "come to himself,' ' 
and the necessity for punishment will be past. He 
will, as he always does when he is in good physical 
condition, desire to be a good child. There will 
be something there for the mother to work with. 
Even if he has had no special excitement, there may 
be times, in the life of an especially nervous child, 
when his vitality is at a low ebb, and the regular 
routine of life is too much for him. If he shows 
signs of nervous irritability, snarling and snapping, 
or crying at nothing, he should never be reproved. 



118 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

He should be put to bed, not at all as a punishment, 
but with the tenderest affection and the most solemn 
pity for the poor little sensitive creature. If there 
is in this prescription of rest for nervous fret, no 
hint of punishment, or shame, the child will not 
resent it, but will soon learn to yield himself up 
to the soothing influence. 

How to Avoid a "Brain-Storm." — If, when 
several little children are playing together, the 
mother hears one begin to speak in a loud, excited 
voice, and to have nervous, disorganized motions, 
such as knocking the playthings about, she should 
come up quietly to the group and remark calmly 
that " Johnny is evidently too tired to play any 
longer. He'd better go and rest for a time, until 
he feels better." Then he is led away, very gently. 
There should be the utmost care not to seem to 
use this as a chastisement. His face and hands 
should be washed in cool water (there is very apt 
to be a slight fever present when nervous irrita- 
bility sets in), his clothing loosened, and he himself 
laid on a bed in a quiet room. This treatment has, 
in addition to the invaluable physical effect, a very 
strong moral one. The gentleness, the peace of 
the room, the utter isolation, the inaction — there 
seems nothing left for the child to battle with, noth- 
ing for his " naughtiness" to feed upon. In fami- 
lies where this humane regime is in force, I have 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 119 

known instances of children of four and five, who 
have begun to be self conscious and reasonable, who 
come to their mothers and ask to be put to bed for 
half an hour, because they "are beginning to feel 
naughty." Children do not enjoy the miserable, 
unhappy excitement of being naughty, no matter 
what our misunderstanding reading of them may 
seem to indicate. And if they have had a fair 
experience of a sure escape from the " brain-storm' ' 
of a fit of insubordination, they are very apt to 
resort to it of their own accord. If it is evident 
that the child cannot be sleepy, for instance, only 
a short time after a nap, another calming expedi- 
ent is to take him gently away from the others to 
a quiet place outdoors, where he is left to play in 
solitary proximity to the bosom of Mother Earth. 

But of course this remedy cannot be applied, if 
the nervous fit comes on while the mother is pric- 
ing laces in a department store and the child hang- 
ing to her skirts, or if they are at an "amusement 
park," with bands braying and tooting about them, 
and crowds of excited pleasure seekers noisily 
going their way. 

This is another reason for never taking children 
away from the quiet home life, except to some 
equally quiet spot out-of-doors. 

This rule may be relaxed, of course, as the chil- 
dren grow older, but it should be relaxed very 



120 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

gradually, with the fewest possible breaks in the 
tranquil and unchanging life. 

Fourth. — Necessity for Constant Activity in 
Eaely Childhood. — The final lesson we American 
mothers have to learn from Dr. Montessori and 
her wonderful success with the training of little 
children, is the lesson of positiveness, as opposed 
to negativeness in their lives. The craving for 
constant, unceasing activity in little children is 
intense. This is a normal and blessed instinct of 
theirs, which does more than anything to develop 
them. And the mother should constantly bear it 
in mind. Her attitude towards her little child 
should be as little negative as may be; she should 
set her grown-up wits incessantly to work to devise 
wise, harmless and beneficial actions for the child, 
not merely to forbid him unwise and harmful ones. 
And here the Montessori apparatus is of incalcu- 
lable value. It caters with scientific ingenuity to 
the need for action of the small child, and relieves 
the mother's inexperienced brain of a great part 
of the strain of inventing suitable exercises for chil- 
dren under six or seven. The child can be, to a 
large extent, turned loose with the Montessori appa- 
ratus, with the certainty that he will not hurt him- 
self or anything else, and that he is learning some- 
thing. 

Montessoei Apparatus Not Enough. — But the 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 121 

Montessori apparatus, valuable as it is, is not 
enough. As has been said many times in the pre- 
ceding pages, the mother's mind must be alert and 
ingenious to supplement it as the child grows. For 
instance, blunt pointed scissors and plenty of paper 
to cut are as indispensable as the geometric insets. 
Constant exercises in the occupations of every-day 
life, such as washing and wiping toy dishes and 
setting a small table, sweeping the floor with a 
small broom, learning to dust, etc., are as necessary 
as the sandpaper letters. If the children are ini- 
tiated into these exercises young enough, before 
their natural instinct for action and for helpful 
action has been atrophied by the customary idling 
in early childhood, the mother will find the utmost 
eagerness for such activities, and not at all the lazy, 
shirking attitude towards them so frequently seen 
in older children, who did not have proper train- 
ing in their early life. 

Habit of Obedience a Slow Growth. — Does all 
this seem a long way from the question of obedi- 
ence? It is not in the least. For the question 
of obedience in the young children is largely con- 
cerned with other matters than obedience, or to put 
it differently, with indirect means of attaining 
obedience. Obedience for the moment can always be 
attained directly by the brutal method of using 
force, because the adult is always stronger than 



122 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

the little child. But, of course, obedience of this 
sort lasts exactly as long as the force can and is 
applied, which means an ungoverned adolescence 
for the child, and a childhood full of anger and 
storms of rebellion. 

The other kind of obedience, the right kind, 
can be attained only very gradually, for it is at 
least as difficult an achievement as learning the 
multiplication table. The child needs to begin with 
very small beginnings in this as in any other im- 
portant activity of his life, to be asked in early 
childhood to obey as seldom as possible, because his 
life is rightly and carefully suited to his needs; to 
have the reason for obedience; the real, underly- 
ing philosophic reason explained to him as soon as 
possible and as often as necessary; never to be 
asked or expected to obey when he is having what 
amounts to a fit of hysteria; and, finally, to have 
his life so filled with interesting, profitable and 
entertaining occupations that the question of obedi- 
ence enters into it very little. Through the daily 
experience of living a well-ordered, industrious, pur- 
poseful life, he learns, unconsciously the joys of 
peace and tranquillity, and he comes to be as 
unwilling to wreck these by insubordination as his 
mother is unwilling to have him. Like any other 
good habit, obedience cannot come from one or two 
violent efforts. It must come from a long, long 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 123 

continuance in the right conditions. And to secure 
these " right conditions" the Montessori apparatus, 
method and philosophy are the most potent means 
as yet discovered. 

VII 

SOME OF THE QUESTIONS THAT ARE 
ANSWERED 

"Who is Dr. Montessori? 16 

What facts about children did she rediscover? 17 

What is the single most important principle of her Method ? 18 
What three principles may be said to sum up the Method ? 19 

On what principles can children learn without detailed instruc- 
tion? 21 
Why should the five senses be carefully and directly trained ? 23 
What is a Casa dei Bambini ? 25 
Will little children learn useful things if not forced to stop 

playing? 26 

Why is spontaneous attention better than forced attention? 27 
Is it well to help the child with his Montessori problems ? 

28, 29, 30, 32 
Do little children as a rule learn best through the eyes or 

through the fingers? 33 

What are some of the essentials for teaching system and 

order? 35, 36, 82 

Why should a child learn to dress and feed himself as early in 

life as possible ? 37 

Why should the little child not be hurried? 39 

Why is a very large rag doll to be especially valued as a play- 
thing? ' 40 
Should little children be allowed to handle or play with small 

objects? 38 

How can children be taught to "see with the fingers " ? 34 

What are some of the advantages of learning to do things by 

touch rather than by sight ? 35 

Does Montessori freedom for the child mean upsetting all or- 
der in the household or schoolroom? 29 
Why the child needs training in bodily poise and how this can 
be obtained. 67, 68, 69 



124 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 

Should children be allowed to play with water ? How ? Why ? 70 
Should little children do housework ? How? 71,72 

How should the alphabet be taught ? 73 

What are the three signs by which a Montessori mother or 
teacher can tell when the child is nearly ready for the 
explosion into writing? 78 

Should a little child have pets of his own ? 81 

What is meant by a " Montessori scheme of existence ' ' for lit- 
tle children? 82 
Should a child's life have some unvaryingly regular events? 83 
Under what conditions do little children take an interest in 

arithmetic? 84, 85, 86 

How should the numbers be taught? 87 

How can arithmetic be taught by means of games? 88 

How can the Montessori game of "Making the Silence" be 

duplicated in the home? 95 

Why should a child practice exercises in immobility? 96 

Why should a child 's actions about the house be as free as pos- 
sible? 97,98 
How can ordinary incidents in home life be turned into Mon- 
tessori exercises? 
Should little children be allowed to play with books? With 
delicate breakable objects? Under what conditions? 
Why? 100 
Should a little child use a tin, a silver or a china cup ? 101 

ABOUT OBEDIENCE AND HOW IT IS OBTAINED 

What should a mother always add to the command "Don't do 

that"? 112 

Why should the little child be trusted as much as possible ? 102 
Should a child be taught to obey as is an animal? 108 

Should children be forced to obey commands based on personal 

wishes of their parents ? 109 

Why should children always feel that they are obeying a law, 

not an adult's whim? 110 

How can unreasonable commands be avoided ? 99 

Under what general conditions of life is the question of obedi- 
ence simplified? 108, 109 
Why is there need for clear thinking in issuing commands for 

children? 110 

Under what conditions are ' ' naughty ' ' actions not punishable ? 98 
Why is it important that the child's natural impulse to see and 

to do things should not be suppressed ? 97 



MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 125 

How does the Casa dei Bambini inculcate absolutely quiet 

life for young children? 115 

How treat a nervously exhausted child who is acting as if it 

were naughty? 114 

How to avoid children 's brain storms ? 118 

Why do children seem to enjoy being naughty? 119 

Why should little children share in adult life and pleasures as 

little as possible? 115 

Should the mother's attitude toward the child ever be purely 

negative ? 120 

Why is enforced unreasoning obedience fatal to real growth ? 121 
How can the right kind of obedience be obtained by little 

effort? 122 

ABOUT DIDACTIC MATERIALS 

What are the aims of the Montessori Apparatus? 47 

What precaution should be taken to heart by everyone using 

the apparatus ? 24 

What is the best course to follow when just beginning the use 

of the Montessori materials? 31 

Has a mother at home any advantage of the Montessori prin- 
ciples over the best teachers ? 30 
In which direction should all Montessori "touching" exercises 

betaken? Why? 35,48 

If the child is not interested in a piece of apparatus or an exer- 
cise, should he be coaxed or induced to go on with it ? 

36, 41, 48, 57, 85 
What are the two special uses of the buttoning frames ? 35 

How shall a child be introduced to the Tower Blocks ? 42 

What should be done with the first used pieces of the Montes- 
sori apparatus when new pieces are brought out ? 41 
Why should Montessori apparatus be used only for the purpose 

for which it was intended? 45 

What games can be played with the Fabric Squares ? 50 

How can the child be taught the names and qualities of other 

fabrics than those in the Montessori apparatus? 52 

What games are good for the sense of hearing? 53, 54 

What is the use of the Plane Geometric Insets ? 55 

What games can be played to sharpen the sense of color ? 64 

Why are the Sandpaper Letters so necessary? 73, 74 

What games can be played with the Alphabet? 75 

What are some simple home pieces and furnishings that will 
supplement and substitute for the Montessori ? 90 



INDEX TO MONTESSORI MANUAL 



Arbitrary classification of school- 
children undesirable, 13. 
Advantage of blindfold exercises, 57, 

58. 
Avoiding "brain-storms," 118. 
Activity an essential of child-life, 68. 
Beginning of habit of obedience, 112, 

121 ff. 
Child's share in life of the home, 71, 

81 ff, 97 ff. 
Dr. Montessori's training, 17. 
Description of Casa dei Bambini, 

25 ff. 
Does ordinary modern education do 

more harm than good? 10. 
Direction in which "touching exer- 
cises" should always be taken 48, 

56. 
Disadvantages of the mother at home 

compared to Montessori Directress, 

79, 80. 
Difficulties of English spelling, 76. 
Discipline and Obedience, 107 ff. 
Gymnastic exercises, 67 ff. 
How the bright child is kept back by 

ordinary systems of education, 12, 

13. 
Habits of neatness and order a 

part of Montessori training, 36, 37. 
How young a child should we expect 

to obey orders? 110. 
Home-made exercises, 38, 40, 70, 98, 

99, 100, 121. 
Importance of training senses, 23. 
Montessori qualities in a child, 31. 
Need for great quiet and regularity 

in the child-life, 63, 111, 113. 114 ff. 
Nature Study, 103 ff. 
Purpose of Montessori apparatus, 23, 

47. 
Some advantages of the mother at 

home over the Montessori Direct- 
ress, 30. 



Self-education a vital necessity, 32, 

42. 
Silence training, 93 ff. 
Spontaneity an essential, 70, 106. 
Trust of the child, 101. 
Teaching self-control, 96 ff. 
Tired child not a "naughty" child, 

113, 117, 119. 
Teaching the use of sense of touch, 

33. 
Underlying idea of Montessori 

Method, 19, 20, 21, 24. 
Vicious habit of passivity, 14. 
Value of free-will over enforced at- 
tention to studv, 27, 48, 57, 63, 

79, 85. 
"What should education do? 10. 
Waste of time in average systems of 

education, 11, 12. 
Water-play, 70. 

Why should parents be obeyed? 109. 
Use of apparatus — 

Arithmetic for young children, 
83 ff, 88 ff. 

Buttoning frames, 35; Exercises 
supplementary to, 40. 

Block Tower, 41, 43. 

Broad Stair, 43. 

Beginning use of pencil, 61, 62. 

Long Stair, 45. 

Movable alphabet, 75 ff, 91, 92. 

Outlines of plane insets, 59. 

Plane geometric insets, 55. 

Review exercises with apparatus, 77. 

Sandpaper board, 47, 49. 

Sandpaper alphabet, 73 f 

Sandpaper numbers, 87, 91. 

Solid geometric insets, 31; supple- 
mentary exercises to, 38. 

Textile exercises with fabrics, 50. 

Tactile exercises with solids, 52. 

Training sense of hearing, 53. 

Training the eye, 64 ff. 
Questions answered, 124. 



126 



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